


Dark Old House

by Anonymous



Series: Charmers [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alpha Hunk (Voltron), Alpha Pidge | Katie Holt, Alpha Ryan Kinkade, Alpha Shiro (Voltron), F/F, F/M, Family Fluff, Halloween, Haunted Houses, Inheritance, Kid Fic, M/M, Omega Keith (Voltron), Omega Lance (Voltron), Omega Matt Holt, Omega Verse, Scooby Doo References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 35,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27276358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: In which Lance unexpectedly inherits a Victorian house and shenanigans ensue.
Relationships: Hunk/Keith (Voltron), Kuro/Pidge | Katie Holt, Lance/Shiro (Voltron), Matt Holt/Ryan Kinkade
Series: Charmers [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576792
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23
Collections: Anonymous





	1. All Through The Night

**Author's Note:**

> This was loosely inspired by binge watching episodes of multiple different Scooby-Doo series. Happy Halloween, everybody!

  
_“Can sneaking your child’s Halloween candy actually make you believe you're seeing ghosts? Join me, Hira Steele, as I interview the controversial doctor making the claim that the orange food dyes used in Halloween candy specifically cause adults to hallucina– ”_

The wide screen TV winked out as Matt picked up the remote from the coffee table and clicked it off.

“Hey, I was watching that,” Pidge protested. She and Kuro were loved up together on the futon couch in their living room.

“Trust me, you don’t need to hear anything that lady has to say,” Matt replied, “and I can say that with authority because I’ve met her. Anyway, we’re not here to watch the news.” He nodded at the man sitting in the butterfly chair across from his. “We’re here for Keith.”

Keith flushed under the sudden intense scrutiny of his friends. They’d been on a double play date at the married student housing complex where Pidge and Kuro lived. The complex had a courtyard with playground equipment and a dog run in it, making it a convenient place for them all to get together. As the Halloween season was upon them, naturally the conversation had wound around to what costumes everybody was wearing. Holts celebrated Halloween like other families celebrated birthdays and Christmas: with great enthusiasm and as much panache as humanly possible.

Kuro was working as a performer in a Halloween theme park attraction, so he’d be wearing his character’s costume because he’d be on the job for most of the night. Pidge had issued an invitation for the others to join her at the theme park, but they’d had to decline. It was trick or treat night, Banon’s second and Sunny’s first. At three years-old Sunny was old enough to walk in a straight line and say ‘twick ow tweat,’ so Keith was taking him around the neighborhood while Hunk stayed behind to wait for trick or treaters to come to their door. No costume for Keith, unless an all-black ensemble and a fearsome scowl for anyone who might dare to put toothpaste in his child’s candy bag counted. It was Sunny’s choice of Halloween costume which had them gathered in this living room today while the kids napped in the spare room and the dogs slobbered on rawhide treats in the kitchen.

“You’re sure he didn’t mean that he wants to go as Thunderstorm Darkness,” Pidge asked, for like, the third time.

“I’m sure,” Keith insisted. “He said he wants to go as me.” (“You bwave Mama, I wan be like you,” was what he’d said). The request left Keith floored, warmed and confused. His kid thought he was cool! “How am I supposed to dress him up as me?”

“He looks a ridiculous amount like you already, dude,” Matt pointed out, and he wasn’t wrong.

Sunny had inherited Keith’s hair, eyes and face, and his little toddler build suggested he might eventually develop Keith’s overall body proportions, although his height indicated strongly that he’d grow up to be Garrett tall. His skin tone had settled in a shade of golden tan midway between Hunk’s and Keith’s skin tones.

“I mean, I guess I could dress him up in clothes that look like what I would wear, but I don’t know how that’s supposed to read as a Halloween costume.”

“You should teach him how to do that glare of death you do,” Pidge suggested. “You know, the one that scares the piss out of people.”

Keith glared at her. Pidge didn’t react, remaining one of the few people he interacted with regularly who wasn’t ever phased by it.

“Sunny’s too sweet to glare like that,” Kuro said. “You should paint his face kumadori style, he would be so adorable and scary!”

Matt and Pidge agreed that it would be very cute. Keith sighed and resigned himself to trying to explain the abstract concept of symbolic makeup to a three year-old on the ride home. Sunny did have Hunk’s easygoing nature in most respects; even his ‘demon age’ of two had been more of a year-long inconvenience than anything truly terrible. He’d agreeably drink apple juice if they ran out of orange juice, or watch cartoons if playing outside in the backyard wasn’t an option due to rain or the heat index. But when he wanted something – _really_ wanted something – he could be every bit as stubborn about it as his mother, and he had decided that he wanted to dress as Keith for Halloween. Keith wasn’t sure how well the makeup suggestion was going to be accepted when it just wasn’t something he actually wore on a daily basis these days.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
“Phone call, Lance.”

“Thanks Amalgamus, I’ll take it in the back room.”

Lance strolled away from his station towards the small room that housed the salon’s air quality equipment along with the sound system and a small office setup. Their receptionist was a performance artist who regularly came to work dressed eccentrically even by New York City standards and refused to answer to the name on his W2, but there was nobody better at keeping track of the many calls and messages that came through the front desk. The early days when they’d been trying to do it themselves had been chaotic. Amalgamus could append 900 more names to his professional moniker and Lance would gladly use every single one to avoid going back to the days of yore when everybody was trying to make out everybody else’s shorthand system. Well, the days of a couple of years ago, anyway.

Antor had saved up his pennies and opened his own salon in Upper Manhattan, with Lance and Twyla as limited partners. Antor maintained majority share in the small salon and together they’d been able to hire some extra staff working on commission (except for Amalgamus who was hourly). Twyla had been steadily making a name for herself working runways and photo-shoots, but she liked the idea of having a home base where she could take clients instead of having to go to the clients every single time. Lance had built up some word-of-mouth for himself apprenticing with Kalon, and schmoozing with professional makeup artists while posing for catalogs with Caro (at least until her terrible twos had arrived to put the kibosh on sitting still for any photographer who wasn't her father). Buying into Antor’s salon gave Lance the flexibility to schedule bookings around the needs of a small child, but he did manage to pull in his share of clientele. He knew there would come a day when he was ready to let Antor buy out his share so that he could put out his own shingle, but in the meantime he was content with the status quo, professionally speaking.

Lance walked into the little room with the air filtration system and ultraviolet treatment device hulking against the back wall. One side wall held the racks of audio equipment, and on the front wall sat the little corner desk with a computer cart, filing shelves and a cordless handset that went with the multiline base on Amalgamus’s desk. There was another cordless handset in the breakroom, which was a much more comfortable room than this office/mechanical room, but people were trying to relax in there and Lance wasn’t sure who was on the phone yet. If Caro and Midori had tried to rescue the cat from imaginary space aliens again, then Lance might need to calm down an hysterical Haruka. They were still finding cat hair in all of the places the girls had attempted to hide Atlas from the bad guys the last time. When Haruka had opened Midori’s hard-sided backpack and the cat had leaped out of it, space aliens had probably heard her scream.

Someday soon Lance was going to have to shop for a similar backpack for Caro. But he shouldn’t assume it was Haruka on the phone just because whoever it was had not wanted to let Amalgamus handle whatever it was. It could still be a client. Some of them could be very persistent about speaking to him personally.

“Galaxy of Styles, this is Lance speaking.”

_“Ser Lance McClain de Shirogane?”_ The voice was male and unfamiliar.

“That’s me.” That was Lance’s formal name. Most people who actually used it with him were strangers.

_“I’m glad I found you. I’m Luciano Keezor, Esquire, the attorney handling your aunt’s estate.”_

Aunt? Estate? Lance blanked out a moment. He knew his mother had an older brother who’d died young, but no sisters. Then he did remember which parent had a sister. Of sorts. “You mean Elena O’Honan.” Charles McClain’s stepsister, who had been much older than him when her mother had married his father. “I wasn’t aware that she’d passed.”

_“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”_ Keezor delivered the news with the same polite reserve that a waiter might regret to inform a diner that the blue ribbon pie on the menu was out of stock. _“She named you as the sole heir to her property here in California.”_

Why, of all people, would she have left all her stuff to Lance? “I didn’t think she liked any of us McClains.”

_“Oh, she didn’t. But she has no other living relatives, and she liked the tax man even less.”_

It seemed that Lance had also inherited four years of unpaid property taxes along with the property itself. Property which Aunt Elena had been so loathe to let revert to the state that she’d actually named Lance as her heir, out of concern that he might not show up in a line of consanguinity search. The rooming house had been abandoned after several tenants had complained of symptoms implicating Sick Building Syndrome. Elena had allowed inspectors into the house, who had been unable to find any evidence of mold, asbestos, or any other severe toxins. Just a really old HVAC system and evidence that Elena smoked like a chimney and had been allowing residents to smoke in their rooms as well. Nevertheless, rumors began to circulate that there was something wrong with the house and Elena had been unable to entice any tenants to return before eventually succumbing to emphysema herself.

The power had been shut off since Elena had shuffled off the mortal coil, and would only be turned back on if the final bill was paid. Keezor strongly recommended that Lance not bother with that and just have the building demolished to sell off the lot. He said probate could take a while, but it would go faster if Lance were able to come to Glendale in person to get the ball rolling.

“I’ll have to talk to my husband.” It was not a rote response. He would have wanted to anyway, regardless of whether a trip to California needed to be scheduled. Shiro’s expertise in financial matters made him a great sounding board for this situation.

_“Of course.”_ Keezor evidently took it for granted that Lance, being a married omega, would say that. _“Let me give you my contact information.”_

Lance jotted down the information on a sticky note while mentally working out what sort of takeout to surprise Shiro with at work. Of course he’d know immediately that he was being honeyed up, but that was kind of the point. The honeying up was not to convince him of anything, but rather a soft warning for Shiro to prepare himself for interesting news.

  
*~*~*~*~* 

  
Shiro had wrapped up a conference call earlier than expected and really should have immediately taken advantage of the extra time to conduct some more research into a company he had his eye on, but his anniversary was coming up and he still hadn’t quite made up his mind what he was going to get for Lance. It was their fifth anniversary, a milestone, and traditionally the gift was wood to represent resilience. However, among the modern choices was blue jewelry, which Shiro personally thought looked exquisite on Lance, bringing out his eyes. He hadn’t gifted jewelry since the first anniversary watch, but he had noticed that Lance generally only chose to wear jewelry for special occasions, with the exception being his wedding ring. He wore his watch whenever they went out somewhere nice, his courting necklace for even fancier occasions, and his mourning necklace every Father’s Day and on memorial days. He also had some costume pieces he wore every now and again, but for day to day life he usually stuck to just his wedding ring, and Shiro didn’t think it was just because his occupation was potentially hazardous to precious metals dangling into whatever chemicals he might be working with.

Those first few years with Carolína, the more traditional anniversary gifts had seemed like more practical choices, and been welcomed as such. A plush cotton robe for the second anniversary, a nice leather satchel for the third, a shiatsu foot massager for the fourth. Alright so the fourth one had been modern, not traditional. They’d all been good choices for a young mother on the go. But now Caro was three years-old and due to begin school at the Friends Academy in April. Shiro judged it was time to bring romance back into his gifting game.

Lance still loved window shopping at Tiffany’s, though he rarely made a purchase. Shiro suspected the warm fuzzy Lance got from that store had more to do with the old Audrey Hepburn movie that he also loved than it did the jewelry sold within. Still, if he was going to gift jewelry again then Tiffany’s would be a good place to start looking. Maybe he could get a wooden jewelry box to put the ring in, like a gift within a gift. He leaned his chin on his knuckles, daydreaming about a scenario where he enticed Lance to open the jewelry box to find the ring of precious metal hidden inside. The daydream scenario cross-faded into a nightmare scenario where the expensive ring fell out of the box, rolling across the carpet to Caro who picked it up and flushed it down the potty.

There was a reason why Shiro hadn’t given Lance any gifts smaller than about a square foot in size for several years. Caro’s demon age was thankfully behind them now (and he’d thought Midori’s had required courage, he’d had no idea) but she remained an adventurous child fascinated by heroic stories, quite a number of which featured the fantastical destruction of shiny MacGuffins. Her extroversion was most likely thanks to Lance, but her predilection for going full speed ahead into any situation that caught her interest was probably on Shiro. According to Shinji, Shiro himself had been very much the same at her age. Not the striking up conversations with whomever they happened to be sharing a line or an elevator with part, but the seeking out adventure in rooms he did not have permission to be in part. His mother had found it hilarious while it had driven his father to distraction.

Shinji’s son Ise had recently mastered walking without assistance and begun displaying the curiosity and stubbornness in the face of danger which must be a Shirogane specialty, as Kuro and Shinji himself also seemed to have the same trait. Heavy duty crash pads might make a good second birthday present for little Ise. That event was also coming up soon, not too long after Halloween. Vibiana had made a costume for Caro and was sending it up from Miami via priority mail. They didn’t know what it was yet, but there was a very good chance it was frilly. Lance had joked that they’d better get a picture to send to his mother as soon as they put it on her, before Caro had a chance to get into something and damage it.

The door to Shiro’s office suddenly opened but it wasn’t Daniel barging in. It was Lance, carrying a takeout bag and dressed in black. He must have come straight over from work. Shiro was instantly on the alert.

“I sent Kai home with chicken nuggets for the girls,” Lance said as he parceled out food on Shiro’s desk. “I hope you don’t mind riding home with me.”

“I never mind riding anywhere with you.” Lance had picked them up a very grown up meal of mutton stew and wheaten bread from a pub not far from Shiro’s office. Shiro helped him sort out the napkins and cutlery. “What’s the occasion?”

From Lance’s glance up across the desk and a watchful emotion carrying across the bond sense, whatever this was, it was neither bad news nor particularly good. At least, not in Lance’s opinion. That didn’t necessarily mean that Shiro wasn’t about to hear something that would give him a heart attack. He mentally braced himself.

“A lawyer called me at work today. Said my Aunt Elena died and left me everything.”

Shiro reached out, but he wasn’t picking up on any grief from Lance. Then he realized who this aunt had to be. “Is this the elderly aunt who ran you out of a rooming house while screaming like a banshee?”

“That’s the one.” Lance offered a mock toast with his takeout cup of soft cider. “She left me that rooming house, along with its overdue taxes. The lawyer says it’s not fit to live in and I should level it to sell off the lot its sitting on.”

“He could be in a developer’s hip pocket,” Shiro said, dipping a slice of bread in his stew. “You should get the place appraised by a neutral party before you make a decision on that.”

“I did wonder.” Lance nodded. “He actually suggested I come out to California in person, claimed the probate would go faster if I did.”

“The less middlemen involved in probate, the faster it usually goes,” Shiro said, “although since it’s a house it still won’t be all that fast. You might be looking at a year or more to settle the estate, especially if you want to sell it with the house intact.”

“I don’t have any nostalgic memories attached to the place that would make me want to keep it.” Lance made a face. “It’s an old Victorian. Maybe it was a beautiful house once upon a time, but the house I remember getting chased out of was looking pretty sad. It’s even sadder now if the lawyer’s telling the truth.”

“The place is in California?” Shiro felt a glimmer of inspiration.

“Yep.” Lance helped himself to some more bread. “Glendale.”

“What do you think about spending our anniversary where it all began?” The glimmer of inspiration grew to a glow. “We could take Caro with us and make a family vacation out of it before she starts school. Maybe we could even get our brothers to babysit.” Shiro remembered how much mischief those two could cause separately, much less together. “Maybe not both of them at the same time.”

Lance blessed him with a megawatt smile. “You mean have a proper visit with all of our family and friends out there?”

“Yes.” This idea was sounding more and more fortuitous. “We can celebrate our anniversary before we go talk to this lawyer, and visit with everybody while we’re in town. It’ll be great!”

If he planned everything right, this trip would be an even better gift than jewelry.

  
*~*~*~*~* 

  
Lance headed straight to his office after reading bedtime stories to the girls. Haruka was still a strong proponent of small children not sleeping alone, but she had decided that Midori sharing a bedroom with Caro was fine, especially since that bedroom was positioned right above Haruka and Kai’s, with Shiro and Lance directly across the hall. Any monsters under the bed could be summarily dispatched by either set of parents, who could be summoned with just a holler. That setup was not likely to survive the teenage years, but that wouldn’t be for many more years yet. Looming far sooner was Caro’s first day of school. Her application to the preschool Midori attended had already been accepted.

This wasn’t a daycare type of situation with lollipops and popsicle stick art where Lance could just swoop in and declare a mother-daughter personal day whenever he felt like it. This was kindergarten in compliance with the educational standards of the Japanese Ministry of Education. Lance would have to kit her out with sports uniforms, textbooks, and a red backpack like the one Midori carried to school with her. Lance had already gotten started sewing the cloth bags that were supposed to go inside the backpack to protect the various items Caro was expected to take to school with her. Along with learning her numbers and letters, she would also be learning art and music appreciation, Japanese language skills, physical education, and the importance of cleanliness. Shiro was hoping she would take an interest in a musical instrument, because if she was going to master one well enough to go pro, this would be an excellent age for her to start.

She’d picked up the harmonica on her first birthday when they’d done the erabitori ceremony in their hotel suite after the huge party at Gyrgan Garrett’s place. Then she’d tried to put it in her mouth, which Lance wasn’t convinced proved a strong interest in the music it could make so much as it foretold that her molars were starting to come in. As Shinji told it, Shiro himself had picked up a bamboo flute and then put it back down and started playing with the abacus during his own erabitori.

Shiro’s mother had taught English and music at the yochien he had attended when he was a small child. Shinji said there were family pictures of him in adorable school uniforms stored in the villa somewhere and Lance wanted copies of those pictures if he ever happened to come across them. He also wanted the benefit of foreknowledge that his baby was going to adjust well to school, make friends, learn new things and not feel abandoned by her mamá, but that was impossible to know for certain. Best to just be as prepared as possible. They were planning to send Caro to the school for at least one year, two years if she really loved it there, before putting her into an elementary school with a schedule and curriculum more consistent with New York state requirements. They were hoping that the Friends Academy’s affiliation with the Friends Seminary would improve her chances of being accepted there (and if she was, there was a very good chance she’d wind up with Coran’s daughter as a schoolmate).

Lance still wasn’t sure if he wanted to put Caro on the little yellow school bus that shuttled Midori to and from the Friends Academy every weekday morning and afternoon. He honestly didn’t know how Haruka stayed so serene about it. He realized that his daughter would be more likely to get off on the right foot by riding to school with her peers than by being carried into the classroom by her mother, but she was so small. Okay, yes, fearless and loud. But also small. Or at least, she seemed that way to Lance.

He kicked back in his bankers chair as the Skype call connected. In their text convo earlier, Keith had said this would be a good time to call. The call went through and Keith appeared with his mini-me in his lap in what looked like Sunny’s bedroom. Lance remembered from his last visit out there that Keith had moved a laptop cart into the purple and yellow room so that he could get some work done writing his checklist proformas during Sunny’s naps. Sunny excitedly yammered something about his Halloween costume. Toddlerese was a stream of conscious language and could be difficult to translate, but Lance happened to be an expert speaker.

“You’re going as your mom, huh?”

Sunny nodded vigorously, wild black curls flying around his cute little face. It wasn’t his bedtime yet out there on the West Coast, so he still looked alert and perky.

“Well you’re gonna need a mullet to get the full Keith effect.”

Sunny cocked his little head. _“Fishes?”_

Above his cute little face, Keith delivered one of his glares that could peel paint. He was still adamant that the haircut he’d sported before he’d grown it out during his pregnancy and then never bothered to cut it again had not been a mullet. Except it totally had been.

“It’s a haircut,” Lance clarified for the youngster. “Business in the front, party in the back. Your mom used to wear his hair like that, I bet your dad still has pictures.”

Sunny’s sweet face lit up. _“I’m go find Papa!”_ Down off Keith’s lap he clambered, the tippy tap of retreating toddler feet indicating that he was doing just that.

_“Dude, I did not have a mullet,”_ Keith growled.

“Dude,” Lance said. “You so did.”

_“Between you, Kuro and Pidge, my neighbors are gonna think I dressed my kid up like a member of KISS. Trying to explain kumadori was hard enough, now I'm gonna have to try to explain the KISS Army to a toddler.”_

“That might be easier than having to constantly explain that he’s going as you. Unless you want to dress up like twinsies to make it more obvious.”

Keith thought one over. _“That’s a fair point. Anyway, we got the cupcakes.”_ His glare might be able to peel paint, but his smile could summon bluebirds to sing away the blue meanies. _“Thanks.”_

Lance smiled back. “Happy birthday.” Cupcakes were now an annual tradition from Lance to Keith. Not always delivered from the same bakery, but always red velvet. “Since we’re on the subject of celebrating things...”

Lance outlined the whole situation and subsequent travel plans for Keith. Shiro had gone ahead and made some of their reservations while they ate dinner in his office. They were planning to fly into L.A. on the day before their anniversary, and visit the lawyer and the property on the day after it. That would give them partial days of the long weekend for visiting with friends and family.

_“Why don’t you stay an extra day for Halloween?”_ Keith suggested. _“Our neighborhood is like trick or treat paradise. You and me can take Kosmo and the kids around the block while Hunk and Shiro stay at the house and give out candy.”_

Lance agreed that sounded perfect. Keith’s neighborhood looked like the nostalgic suburbs featured in movies. Heck, it might have even really been in a movie before, it was in the right area to have been scouted for one. Their own neighborhood was pretty happening for trick or treat, though it still mystified Haruka to see little kids in masks on the stoop with their bags held out for candy. In Japan, Halloween was mostly a holiday for teens and young adults to show off their cosplay skills and party. Lance had been planning to blitz her with one more eleventh hour campaign to convince her to let him bring Midori on trick or treat with Caro, even knowing that the four year-old didn’t have a costume and that he’d need to make her one, but if they stayed in L.A. then he’d have a whole extra year to talk Haruka around and make a really great costume that didn’t look like it had been stitched together at the last minute.

Shiro probably wouldn’t be hard to convince either. This should give them plenty of time to visit with everybody out there. They went ahead and made their plans. It was going to be a blast.

  
*~*~*~*~* 

  
Shiro had learned that traveling with a small child presented challenges above and beyond listening to Baby Shark on repeat all the way to the airport. Their little voices carried (well, Caro’s did anyway). Their little brains needed stimulation, but not too much stimulation or they could get fussy. Their little bodies needed protection, and in the interests of that Shiro had invested in a Wayb Pico travel car seat which could fold up to be counted as carry-on baggage for Caro. The Wayb Pico usually stayed in the limo, both because it was narrow enough to easily install in the backseat without taking up a huge amount of space on the odd occasion when Caro rode in the limo instead of Lance’s Toyota, and because on those occasions when they did fly with Caro, it was usually Kai who drove them to the airport.

As was the case on this occasion. Kai was being very forbearing about listening to yet another recitation of all the members of the shark family. Then Shiro remembered that Caro had actually learned this song and all of its hand flappy dance moves from Midori, not from her cousins in Miami, and figured that Kai must just be comfortably inured to it by now. Meanwhile, Shiro sometimes still heard ‘doo doo da-doo da-doo’ in his dreams. Kai helped the family unload their luggage outside their terminal and waited with Lance and Caro while Shiro went inside to rent a luggage cart. If he used his own hand cart at departure, he’d have to check it as baggage, so he’d just leave it in the limo and use it when they arrived back in New York after the trip was over.

Usually Shiro preferred to fly first class or business class, but when it was just the three of them traveling together, he’d begun opting for premium seats in the airplane’s main cabin instead. That way they could sit beside one another, because those seats were more often arranged three abreast. They needed a window seat for their daughter’s car seat, and Shiro preferred to bookend Lance by taking the aisle seat on his other side over taking a seat behind him, which is what he would have had to do in a typical 2+2 business or first class configuration. The fact that they were much less likely to be the only family with young children in the main cabin than in either the business or first class sections was also a consideration. There would be less ‘control your child’ eye beams aimed in their direction because there were more likely to be other parents with children in their vicinity. All of these trade-offs were worth tolerating a more packed cabin on a cross-continental trip.

Shiro stowed their carry-ons in the overhead bins, and then took Caro from Lance’s arms so that he could tether her car seat and arrange the tote bag carrying her essentials under his seat, since he was going to be sitting in the middle. Shiro hefted his bundle of sweet-smelling child while smiling awkwardly at passengers waiting for them to clear the aisle. Lance had been putting the violet-scented baby perfume on Caro which, when combined with her own benign toddler scent, brought out that indescribable feeling that older parents referred to nostalgically as the magic years, but which Shiro had never fully believed in until he’d begun to experience it for himself. Caro’s soft floof moved against his cheek as she looked around in curiosity. Poco Rojo dangled from one small fist, and it was a good thing the doll didn’t have button eyes because they’d have been long gone by now. The doll’s vest was hanging on by a literal thread.

“Tou-chan, we going to abuela house?”

Carolína called him either Papá, which came from Lance’s efforts to teach her some Spanish, Daddy which was easiest for her to pronounce, or Tou-chan, which she’d picked up from observing Midori with Kai, but she was never confused about the fact that she was addressing her father, whatever nickname she chose to use. Shiro suspected that instances of Tou-chan would increase after she started going to kindergarten with Midori, but that Daddy might regain the lead after she switched to a different elementary school. It seemed she’d remembered what an airplane was and recognized that she was on one, but forgotten that this plane ride was going to California. The last one she’d been on had indeed been a visit to her grandmother in Miami, back in December.

“Not this time, Lí-chan.” He looked down into eyes the same color as her mother’s but with a shape more similar to his own. “We’re going to see our cousins Keith and Sunny, and Sunny’s daddy Hunk, and Tío Marco, and Kuro oji-san and Pidge oba-san.”

Caro let out a crow of delight. Kuro and Pidge were regular visitors to the brownstone, so she should remember them if she remembered anybody. Then she started trying to sing the Skype ringtone boops, so evidently she remembered the others as well. Lance laughed as he reached for her to strap her back into the Wayb Pico and Shiro went ahead and took his aisle seat. So far their trip was off to an encouraging start.

  
*~*~*~*~* 

  
It was a relief to check into the hotel, but a little surreal when Hunk was no longer the general manager. He’d resigned in order to dedicate himself more fully to his family’s growing bakery and catering enterprise. Nadia Rizavi had been promoted into his former role, and she was every bit as efficient as Hunk had been, though she had a more activity oriented approach to creating a memorable experience for guests. Lance preferred Hunk’s more laid-back vibe personally, but the activities might come in handy if they couldn’t arrange for one of Caro’s uncles to babysit her when they needed to see the lawyer, because some of the hotel’s activities for young children came with Red Cross certified child care providers. The place remained a destination with a lot of fond feelings associated with it for both Lance and Shiro, particularly on their anniversary, so there was no question that they were renting the penthouse suite if it was available, and it was.

Lance couldn’t wait to settle in and order some room service. Shiro had taken advantage of the option to preorder from the airline’s a la carte menu to expand their lunch choices on the plane. Lance’s flatbread sandwich had been delicious and Caro had enjoyed her chicken tenders (a chicky nuggie by any other name would taste as nummy) but he was looking forward to digging into something more filling and then diving face first into bed. Entertaining a small child in a confined space for five hours both exhausted the mind and worked up an appetite. Shiro had eaten some high protein on top of ancient grains thing with ‘power’ in the name, so he had to be hungry too. He hadn’t taken point on distracting the youngling from hollering out cheerfully at fellow passengers, but he had participated in the finger puppet show in a dual role as both the hero and the villain.

He turned to Lance as soon as the bellhop had left with his tip and said, “What do you say about finding a Disney movie and ordering up some dinner?”

“Dinner and flick?” Lance was so down. “You’re on.”

Caro squealed in excitement and ran around her parents’ legs rambling off the names of various princesses she wanted to see before she went to sleep.

“See if you can find _Ralph Breaks the Internet_.”

“On it,” Shiro said. “See if you can find anything on the menu that resembles ickenchay uggetnays.”

Caro already understood ‘chicken nuggets’ in both Spanish and Japanese, so those forms of code were out. It would be a bad idea to get her little hopes up if the room service menu didn’t have the chicky nuggies. They tried to keep her palate broad, but after a long plane ride when they wanted her to go to bed without a fuss, food palliatives were not at all unwelcome.

“On it,” Lance said, and then he happened to glance toward the balcony doors and realized something so terrifying it sent a chill down his spine.

Shiro was back from the living room in a flash. “What?” He’d felt that jolt.

“She can open doors,” Lance said, fists clenched in his shirt.

The last time they’d brought her here, she’d barely been able to walk without help much less open a door. But now she could walk, run, and like a velociraptor she could definitely work a door handle. The doors to this suite led out onto a balcony with a wrought iron railing that she could probably squeeze her little melon through, if she was really determined. Ay Dios, what if she tried to climb it? Lance could see and feel the same thoughts running through Shiro’s mind, and he had a lot more baggage attached to the risk of a fall.

“I’m going to lock all the exterior doors,” he said grimly.

“Do that,” Lance agreed. “I’ll handle the rest.”

It was completely true that having children affected every part of a parent’s life. Some of the changes could be planned for well in advance. Others might see a parent running around like mad trying to catch up while wondering how in the world such a confluence of events had managed to sneak up on them.

  
*~*~*~*~* 

  
Shiro opened his eyes to morning light shining through a crack in the curtains and was not in the least bit surprised to find Caro wedged in between himself and his spouse. Before sitting down to a dinner of spaghetti bolognese they’d swept the suite to ensure that all the kitchen tools were put away, all heavy furniture stable, all outlets safe from questing fingers, and all doors to the balcony securely locked. They’d given Caro the safety tour of the suite, and when she’d finally gotten sleepy after the movie they’d put her to bed in the chaperone room, because it didn’t have a door to the balcony. They’d bolstered that bed with extra pillows taken from the cloister room, before locking the cloister room up because it did have a door to the balcony. But Caro was used to sleeping in a bedroom with Midori, so it was little wonder that she’d climbed out of bed in the chaperone room to come seek them out at some point during the night. She and Midori were experts at pushing bed and sofa pillows onto the floor to turn them into makeshift crash pads.

The bolster pillows lying on the floor in front of the master bedroom’s bench told the most likely story of how Caro had scaled the bed to join her parents, although Lance waking up and helping her was also not outside the realm of possibility. Shiro wondered if Midori was sleeping in the garden floor apartment with her parents while they were gone. Probably; and Atlas was probably sleeping right in the center of Shiro and Lance’s bed, stretched out like a little hedonist. Shiro sighed. It might be time to reconsider his predilection for always renting the penthouse suite. The impacts of parenthood were still being felt by their family, and if Lance had his way they weren’t even done adding to it yet.

Both Lance and Caro were still fast asleep, splayed out in a remarkably similar disarray of limbs. Shiro smiled at the sight. Then he decided to shift his rear out of bed and call room service for their breakfast before taking a shower. Hopefully he’d have some kind of babysitting arrangements made before the other two got up, because it was his anniversary and he had a specific plan of romance in mind for the evening.

  
*~*~*~*~* 

  
Looking around his dining room as lunch wound down, Keith realized that most of the people presently at the table had also been guests at Lance and Shiro’s rehearsal dinner five years earlier. In addition to the couple who lived there and the couple whose anniversary they were toasting with a slice (and the children of those couples), Marco, Kuro and Pidge were also in attendance. The only one in that group who hadn’t been at that previous dinner had been Pidge (and of course the kids unless the gleam in their parents’ eyes counted). Shiro had picked up pizzas from the same pizzeria as before, and brought them over along with their omiyage. Marco had agreed to babysit the kids while their parents went out on separate dates. Kuro would have loved to have done it, but he had work that night and it was the last weekend before Halloween, so park attendance was expected to be high.

As Kuro regaled his older brother with the details of his job scaring the crap out of people who’d paid for the privilege, Hunk and Pidge got deeper into a discussion about space modulation, and Sunny led Marco and Caro into the living room to show them his toy chest while Kosmo, who had grown up to become an excellent guard dog, kept a watchful eye over them. Keith noticed Sunny pointing out the gaming equipment. He and Hunk let Sunny play Heith during their Monsters & Mana sessions sometimes, though his verbal and fine motor skills weren’t yet up to more than a casual assist every once in a while. Lance had sent Pike’s kittens into hiding with the intention that Caro might want to play one of them some day, although at present she had a more compelling playmate in the form of Haruka’s daughter Midori. Keith picked up the children’s abandoned plates and took them into the kitchen to load them into the countertop dishwasher which had been a fourth anniversary present Hunk and Keith had gone in on together for each other. As he set aside crusts for Kosmo and scraped the plates, he glanced into the living room again, where Sunny was showing his guests how Kosmo could walk around the coffee table carrying Ewan the Dream Sheep on his back like a pony.

Keith smiled as he gave the plates a quick rinse before opening the dishwasher to stack them. He’d been skeptical of the plush toy’s ability to soothe Sunny to sleep when he was a baby, but the sheep had won them both over. Keith had cadged it himself on the rare nights when Hunk wouldn’t be home until late. He heard the harp sound effect and looked over to see his son demonstrating how to get Ewan to make different noises. Sunny was smart as a fox, and often treated as more mature than his age because of his height. Standing close to Lance’s girl, he stood a good five inches taller than her, and they were the same age down to the day.

Sunny was actually even a few days younger than Carolína when factoring in gestational age. It wasn’t just sexual dimorphism, and it wasn’t that Carolína was short, either, because she wasn’t, at least not for a three year-old. Sunny positively towered over some of the other children in his age group at his Montessori preschool. He was so eager to prove he was a big boy, but to Keith he was still his little boy, and he wasn’t in any big hurry for Sunny to grow up. His view was suddenly blocked by Lance, coming up beside him at the sink carrying the rest of the plates they’d used for their pizza feast.

“You didn’t have to clear the table,” Keith said.

“It’s no problem.” Lance smiled at him before following the direction of his gaze. “Thanks again for letting Marco watch Caro at your house.”

“He’s doing me a favor too,” Keith reminded his friend. It had been a while since he’d gone to a theater to see a movie that didn’t have a toy line associated with it.

“They get big so fast,” Lance murmured, looking over into the living room again. “I can’t believe she’s starting preschool in just six months.”

“She’ll be okay,” Keith reassured him. Sunny had been in preschool for just over a year already. It had been an adjustment initially not having his baby riding his hip for large parts of the day, but they’d both adapted, and so would Lance. When it was time to put Sunny in Saturday gakuen, that’s when Keith would wonder where all the time had gone. “You still planning on having another one?”

“Yep.” Lance scraped and rinsed plates and passed them to Keith. “I’m going off my suppressants in January. With any luck I’ll be barfing again by Spring. How about you, have you thought about expanding the royal line of Marmora?”

Keith had thought about it, and talked about it with Hunk. Right now their house and their busy lives felt full to bursting with just one child in it (two counting the fur kid). Maybe it was the only child in him, but Keith didn’t feel like Sunny was missing out on anything by not having a younger sibling. Hunk had confessed his fear of tempting fate by putting Keith through another pregnancy with a potentially big baby and that’s when a discussion of possibly fostering a child had begun between them. Still, they both had to consider the oops factor of missing a suppressant pill. Keith had been extra careful since then, but there were still any number of other ways his suppressants could get compromised again.

“If it happens, it happens.”

That pretty much summed up how both he and Hunk felt about it. They weren’t going to make an active attempt like Lance and Shiro were doing, but if they did happen to conceive again, the child would be welcomed and wanted. In the meantime, Sunny got plenty of socialization through preschool, play dates, and sleepovers with the children of close friends. No, Keith wasn’t in a rush to have another baby, although the idea of fostering an older child had an undeniable appeal. If only he could freeze frame moments from his baby’s childhood and live in them like a beautiful dream. He couldn’t, he knew that very well, but he fully intended to appreciate the time spinning out like gold for as long as it lasted.

  
*~*~*~*~* 

  
Shiro drank in his spouse with his eyes as he stepped out of the master bathroom in a blue jumpsuit with a black shawl collar. Lance’s courting necklace winked at his throat. On his feet were Cuban heels similar to the ones he’d worn on their first real date. Shiro still remembered how Lance had asked if he needed to be ready for dancing, which they hadn’t gotten to do on that first date. Shiro counted it as a date in spite of the circumstances under which it occurred, and he knew that Lance did too.

“That’s a little daring, isn’t it?” Shiro asked as Lance stepped up to help him knot the silver tie he’d gifted him the very first week they’d known each other. Stain-attracting properties of brushed fabric aside, the jumpsuit also had long sleeves slit to the elbow, revealing long brown forearms as Lance lifted them to finish adjusting Shiro’s Windsor knot.

“I know how to keep my sleeves out of the soup,” Lance said, patting Shiro’s chest. His anniversary watch and wedding ring glinted under the overhead lights. “Where are you taking me, anyway?”

Shiro grinned. “It’s a surprise.”

  
*~*~*~*~* 

  
Keith and Hunk were both believers that the farthest seats in the back row of the cinema were the best seats in the house. Such seats afforded a view of the big screen above everybody else’s noggins, and closer proximity to the Dolby speakers. There was nobody behind them to kick the backs of their chairs, and nobody trying to crawl over them to get to and from the bathroom. Honestly there was no reason for a grown adult to have to go running for the bathroom in the middle of the film’s runtime anyway; just avoid polishing off a gallon sized fountain drink before the end of the first act and there should be no problems. If the theater didn’t sell any fountain drinks smaller than bucket sized, then just share with a date.

Every single one of these stipulations went straight out the window when attending the cinema with a small child. Then it was all about less climbing of stairs for short legs, less strain for little ears and eyes, faster consumption of lobby snacks because of little hands that got into everything, and closer proximity to the aisle for sudden bathroom emergencies in the name of all that is holy and good. But there was no tiny human with them at the movies this time. Keith scooched deeper into the padded seat, leaning his head on Hunk’s arm which was draped across the back of it, as divergent theme songs battled on the sound system and warring logos exploded onto the screen.

**Puppet Master VS Chucky VS Freddie VS Jason VS Sadako VS Kayako VS Malachai**

Hunk passed Keith the buttered popcorn as a crane shot swept over a field of corn, revealing a creepy looking redhead running out of that field into a creepy looking house while yelling, _“Outlandeeeerr!”_ As the character onscreen burst theatrically through the front door a croaking noise flowed out of the theater’s speakers. Keith grinned as he poked his straw beside Hunk’s in the bucket sized fountain drink they were sharing. They were many years away from letting Sunny watch a movie like this, even by accident. Keith would have resigned himself to waiting for streaming and then watched it furtively on his phone while Sunny was asleep if not for the babysitting offer from Lance’s brother Marco. The guy talked a good game about being a devil-may-care ladies’ man, but underneath all the suavity he was basically a friendly and responsible dude.

  
*~*~*~*~* 

  
Marco was an accomplished minder of children, an epithet for which he felt no threat to his manliness. A handsome man who was good with kids possessed tremendous appeal with the fairer sexes, and anyone who failed to appreciate that was doomed to lose dates to Marco Magnus Alvárez Fernández. Also, it was a valuable life skill to have for someone who came from as big a family as Marco did. In his years of experience at being trusted with other people’s children, there was one thing that Marco had observed to be true more often than not, and that was this: toddlers were bossy. To wit, the manner in which these children had taken control of their game of Uno Moo by insisting that the blue and green animals both fell under a color category they were calling ‘aoi.’ Carolína had started it, and Marco felt it to be his responsibility as a wise (yet still cool) Tío to call her on it.

“Mi sobrina, my pig is green, but your chicken is blue.”

“Aoi,” Caro had said, more bullheadedly this time, and Marco had feared he might have to lose his cool Tío points by trying to make a toddler abide by rules, but then Sunny had pushed her blue chicken into the barn with a green sheep, and said, “Aoi sheep.”

Well, if Sunny was going to do it too, then Marco would consider it fair play. Besides, this way it would be easier for him to throw the game in favor of the children. There was no satisfaction to be gained as an adult from winning a board game against preschoolers. He pushed the green sheep into the barn with a blue sheep. He also had a green skunk, but he didn’t want to use it because a skunk was a skip for the next player after him. If he was able to save that piece for last, then he could keep quiet and wait for one of the children to notice and assign him the penalty of taking two extra animals from the barn for not yelling ‘UNO Moo!’ which would surely further his objective in helping one of them ultimately win the game.

Caro pushed the blue sheep into the barn with the farmer, a game piece which was wild. “Mamá!” she said.

The farmer game piece had wide blue eyes in a tan freckled face surrounded by brown cowlicks of hair. “It does sort of look like your mother,” Marco mused. The players were supposed to announce the color and animal of their game piece as they played it, but he’d allow the misnomer in this case. She had forgotten one thing though. “You need to tell us what color can be played next, sobrinita,” Marco reminded her.

Caro gave that question a moment of tiny child focus. “Rojo!”

Sunny looked confused, so Marco clarified, “That’s red in Spanish.”

The little boy brightened and picked up a game piece. “Rojo skunk!”

Over on his doggie sofa, Kosmo grinned conspiratorially at Marco. These kids might not actually need him to throw the game for them after all.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Lance had known where they were going as soon as he’d spotted the Cinderella clock. The maître d’ who led them to their table was none other than Crossley, who must have been promoted in the years since they’d seen him last. Once more Shiro walked beside him with a hand on his lower back as people discreetly took his measure, but this time Lance felt no self-consciousness about it.

“Sir,” Crossley said, as he held out a chair, “Serah,” as he held out another. “Kio will be your waiter tonight.” He nodded to a slightly younger man standing by wearing a vest and apron with a towel over his arm, who nodded back and smiled at them. “The music will begin in thirty minutes, and dancing approximately an hour after that. Enjoy your evening.”

Lance turned to Shiro as Kio stepped forward to fill their water glasses. “Dancing?”

Shiro grinned, clearly pleased with himself. “There’s going to be a jazz orchestra and floor show tonight, and then they’ll open the floor for the diners.”

Lance sat back contentedly as Shiro proceeded to order them as near to what they’d had that first night they’d come here as the restaurant’s kitchens could manage. Since there had been some changes in the intervening years it wouldn’t be exactly the same, but it would be pretty close. Lance recalled that being a very good meal, angry alphas storming off after the palate cleanser notwithstanding, so he had no complaints about the menu. Personally he was looking forward to the dancing, both on the floor and later in the sheets, but there was time. Such a lovely gift that was, time; lovelier than any jewel or perfectly plated entrée. If Lance received no other gift from Shiro than more precious time, he would feel blessed.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Keith laughed as he tried to find comfortable spots for his knees while Hunk fiddled with the driver’s seat incline in the Crosstrek. The crossover was close to reaching the maximum number of years and miles before they ought to think about trading it in for a newer model, but they had a lot of good memories wrapped up in this model. As he proceeded to kiss Hunk’s smiling face while wrapped up in his strong arms, Keith figured they were about to add another good memory to their tally.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Shiro traced a line over Lance’s face, down his long neck and across his torso and thigh, before tracing the line back up to meet smiling blue eyes reflected in lamp light. It had been years since they’d last made love in this hotel room, but the memories were coming back as if it had been just yesterday. Lance had packed some muscle onto his coltish frame since that very first night, his hips felt more solid under Shiro’s hands, and those lovely wide eyes crinkled more noticeably when he laughed these days (which was often). Shiro still loved every inch of him.

“Thinking about round two?” Lance asked.

They’d danced the evening away and then come back to their suite to enjoy a night cap of strawberries and champagne before taking it to the bedroom. Caro was spending the night in Sunny’s room, on a foldout cot that Keith and Hunk had gotten for Sunny’s sleepovers. Lance had packed a small bag for Caro, and Kuro was going to take over the babysitting duties in the morning. Subsequently, Shiro had Lance all to himself for the rest of the night.

“I was thinking about how lucky I am,” Shiro admitted, “but round two sounds good to me too.”

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Hunk sat at the kitchen table nursing another cup of coffee as he supervised the kiddos eating breakfast. Carolína had hilariously tried to make up her cot after sleeping in it, not realizing that it was just going to be put away. Hunk had worried she might be more tender-headed than Lance had said, but it turned out she wasn’t, and her hair was not dissimilar to Sunny’s in texture, though significantly fluffier in the front than his, which was fluffier in the back. Hunk had tamed Caro’s floof with a barrette while asking her a few questions about what she usually ate for breakfast, which seemed to vary mostly between bread and fruit prepared by her mother or soup and rice made by Haruka. Factor in Sunny’s deep and abiding love for any and all types of eggs, and tamago don seemed the natural choice to make for them this morning. Hunk had used Keith’s recipe, and the kids were eating it up heartily.

Keith emerged from the master bedroom dressed for work in his flight jacket bristling with pens and note pads, and aviator sunglasses perched on top of his gloriously wild head of hair. As he smiled and leaned over Hunk to get his good morning kiss, a beam of inspiration hit him.

“Hey,” he said as Keith let him up for air.

“Hey yourself,” Keith smirked.

“Hold up just a sec,” Hunk said, putting a hand over the one Keith had placed on the table when he’d leaned down. “Sunny, is this how you wanted to look for Halloween?”

Sunny bobbed his head up and down, toddler curls bouncing.

Hunk grinned up at his mate. “We don’t need to paint his face or put a name tag on him, we just need to fix him up with some pens and note pads in the NASA jacket Pidge and Kuro got him for his birthday and find some sunglasses for him to wear on his head. Everybody will get it when they see him.”

Keith’s fine features lit up at the knowledge that he wouldn’t have to give a front porch dissertation explaining Sunny’s costume at every house when they went trick or treating.

“But wif fishes,” Sunny said.

“Fishes?” Could he be talking about Keith’s wing pins? Some of them did look kind of like lunate caudal fins. Hunk was sure they could replicate something on the fly with aluminum foil.

Keith frowned. “I did not have a mullet.”

Oh. Hunk considered himself a reasonably competent stylist of toddler hair, but that might be a bit harder to replicate.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
After an early rise and an extravagant breakfast, Lance and Shiro headed out on the Ventura Freeway in the rented Toyota Avalon. They wanted to cruise past the rooming house on the way to the lawyer’s office. The freeway was congested, which was typical, but the car was comfortable. Shiro drove as they chatted, sleepy but relaxed from a night spent doing other things besides sleeping, until about forty minutes later the GPS led them down several side roads and their sleepy relaxation was replaced with wakeful disquiet. Shiro’s attention was diverted from their conversation to the view out of Lance’s window as the car rolled down the cross street that would take them past the rooming house.

“Are you sure this is it?” he asked.

Lance had been expecting this reaction. “This is it,” he confirmed.

The rooming house was located in close proximity to a cemetery. Lance remembered his own reaction when he’d come out here to find his aunt, still relatively new to the country as he was and unsure of what his reception would be with her. The memorial landscape was unlike the forest of alabaster statuary and above ground tombs he’d been accustomed to seeing back home. This place was shaded beneath live oaks, under which tombstones and grave markers rested like beds with quilts of turf. The cemetery where they’d gone to pay their respects to Shiro’s mother during their visit to Japan had also been shaded by trees, mostly sakura, but the cenotaphs interspersed between their trunks had created a moon pale panorama much more similar to Lance’s memories of Cuba than the murky stillness they were driving past now. It was odd to think of someone living so close that they could look down from the upper storey windows and try to pierce the shadows with their eyes.

The rows of live oaks stopped abruptly as the wrought iron fence line ended. The lot next door was large, unfenced and overgrown with weeds. In the center of it stood the rooming house, a three storey Eastlake style Victorian with a wraparound porch and a turret. The siding might have once been painted a tasteful shade of violet or mauve but was now the color of rotting leaves. Vines laid grasping claim to the spindles around the porch. The gable roof appeared to be missing some shingles, and the sun mottled roof of a car poked out of a particularly tall patch of weeds on the far side of the house.

Shiro and Lance silently looked up at the house’s darkened windows as they coasted by. The Avalon’s gas motor cut off and regenerative braking kicked on. Shiro gunned the gas; the hybrid shuddered as the gas motor came back alive. He jerkily accelerated down the street in sport mode and Lance didn’t chide him for abusing the car’s transmission. The house really hadn’t been all that comfortable to approach even back when Lance had assumed he was about to meet a relative in there. He could hardly blame Shiro for wanting to put it in the rear-view as fast as possible.

“I guess I can see why the lawyer recommended demolition,” Shiro said a couple of miles later. “It’s a nice big lot but it’ll have more curb appeal without that house on it.”

Lance turned to watch him in profile as he slowed for a red light. “So you do think I can get an offer on the land?”

“Some people would find the location peaceful.” Shiro rolled to a stop and looked back at him. “If that cemetery is still active, the owners might want to expand. You could always make them an offer.”

There was a thought worth pondering, which Lance did as they continued on toward their appointment. He knew he didn’t want to keep the house. If some historical society wanted to take it off his hands he was open to working out a deal but otherwise the lawyer’s suggestion was sounding like good advice. Whoever owned the cemetery would be the most logical party to approach first to negotiate an offer. If they were interested in expanding they would probably want the house out of the way first.

The GPS guided the car to a strip mall with a brick facade meant to resemble an old-fashioned Main Street like the kinds in old movies, but there was a Jiffy Lube anchoring one corner and a chiropractor’s office across the street so it wasn’t quite convincing. Shiro parked on the curb and Lance got out and fed the meter. Shiro opened the office’s door for Lance and the two walked inside. They were greeted by a legal secretary who half-turned in his seat without getting up from his desk to tell Keezor that his ten o’clock was early.

“Thank you, Nerok.” Keezor’s expression as he leaned out of his office gave the impression that he’d rather be kicking Nerok up the backside than thanking him. That guy must know where all the bodies were buried. “Welcome to my office, please do come in. Would you like anything to drink? I can have Nerok make you coffee or tea.”

Nerok looked up like a kid being asked to take out the trash when his favorite show was on. Lance was certain he didn’t want any drink prepared by Nerok, even if it was just a can of soda from the breakroom fridge.

“No, thank you,” Shiro answered for both of them.

They followed Keezor into a small office with rosewood furniture and nailhead leather chairs. The floors were carpeted with practical loop pile, the walls and ceiling painted a restful shade of blue-green.

Shiro smiled as he took his seat. “My grandmother used to call this color ao.”

Lance knew that he was talking about his father’s mother, who had lived on the Shirogane estate while fighting cancer, a battle she had ultimately lost. Shiro had been very small when his paternal grandmother had died, and he seldom spoke of her, but when he did it was usually with the same fondly melancholy tone as he’d just used.

“Is that so?” Keezor glanced around as he took his seat across the desk from them. “My grandmother always called it haint blue, rest her soul. Now then.” He shuffled some papers across the top of his desk. “How do you desire to dispose of your aunt’s property? I have taken the liberty of researching several options for you.”

Keezor was a tall, handsome alpha and clearly knew that he was conventionally good looking, with the way he dressed his gym-honed body in suits tailored to show it off to best effect. But as he began his spiel about the options he wanted them to consider, Lance thought that there was something rather creepy about his smile.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
“Mei-chan!” Kuro walked around the apartment making a big show of being stumped. “I wonder where she could be?”

Pidge indulged herself in watching her spouse make his graceful way around the living room and kitchen. He sure looked great in jeans, sneaks and a t-shirt, with his hair lifted off his neck in a top knot. Carolína was hiding behind the breakfast bar, skirting around the other side of it every time Kuro circled back in her direction. Pretty smart for a three year-old. It wasn’t Pidge’s job to tell him where she was in this game of hide and seek, though. It was her job to keep a hand on Bae Bae’s collar to prevent her from running over and giving the little girl away with doggie kisses.

Although the giggling should have given her away already. Even a smart three year-old had a blind spot. Kuro was just pretending that he couldn’t find her so he could let the game go on a little longer. Her parents would be along eventually to take them all to lunch before it was time for Pidge to drop off Kuro at work and then go to class. Pidge loved watching Kuro play with the kids whenever they babysat. He’d make such a wonderful parent some day.

Pidge found herself spending more and more time lately wondering how their own eventual kids would turn out. That they’d be intelligent seemed a foregone conclusion. Would they be fascinated by science like a Holt, or artistically inclined like a Shirogane? Tall like Kuro and just about everybody else in Pidge’s family, or short like Pidge herself (and where in the hell had her short phenotype come from anyway)? Would they have Kuro’s kindness, Pidge’s pugnacity, or some combination of those personality traits? All of this speculation was academic, as they were years away from attempting to find out the answers to any of those questions.

Pidge was finishing out her last year of undergrad with a double major in Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science and a minor in Digital Humanities. She should have her degree in hand by June and her grad school applications in well before then. She was applying to six universities, three of which were in Japan, for she hadn’t forgotten her promise to her mother-in-law. Kuro had been working in his chosen field while pursuing a certificate in Entertainment Studies through UCLA Extension, the latter of which he’d completed just a few months prior. They’d been happy together living in this student apartment while working and going to school, but that time was nearing an end. Pidge was eager to be with Kuro in the environment where he’d been raised, and experience life appreciating his perspective as he’d been so willing to do for her.

Pidge would miss the easy access to members of her own family and could even see herself growing nostalgic for the mingled scents of laundry and take out food which greeted her in the breezeway every time she came home to this apartment, but her marriage adventure with Kuro was about to embark on a new phase, and she was ready for that. It wasn’t yet time for their parenting adventure to begin. When it did, she could only hope that she’d have it together as well as her friends and family had done when it had been their turn. Regardless of who wound up carrying the babies, she didn’t want to leave Kuro stuck carrying the associated burdens alone. She’d come up in a family dominated by betas, but she figured she had enough good examples of how to be a responsive and responsible alpha to fumble her way through parenthood without dropping her end of the load. Even Shiro had turned out to be a way better dad than anyone who’d known him during his serial monogamy days could have predicted.

“Mei-chan, I found you!” Kuro finally caught up to the tot and picked her up in his lean arms as she squealed in delight.

If Shiro could figure out how to do the parenthood thing well, then surely Pidge would be able to manage when her time came around.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Shiro asked Lance to drive so that he could call the Los Angeles County Tax Collector’s office on the way back. Something about the smarmy lawyer had put him on edge. He decided it would be better to go ahead and get that bill current rather than wait and see if the lawyer would try something like pursuing a nuisance abatement lien instead of biding another year to initiate a tax deed sale. Keezor’d had that glint in his eyes, like he smelled blood in the water. Shiro used to see that look often, from other investors and lawyers in the days when he pursued faltering companies with more zeal than he did now. He didn’t know what the lawyer could want with Lance’s property, but he had no doubts that he did want something.

After the payment was set up with a representative over the phone, Shiro put a call through to Darrell Stoker and relayed the information they’d been provided with at Keezor’s office. Keezor had given them a number of potential contacts for what he claimed were unsolicited offers on the land. He’d also given them copies of notices he was sending out to Elena’s last known tenants who’d left personal items behind in their rooms. Those tenants had eighteen days to pick up their belongings, after which they could be disposed of as abandoned property. Darrell had promised to look into everything, and Shiro trusted that if anything less than above board were to be found then there was nobody more capable of uncovering it.

Keezor had also handed over a few other items of interest. There was a thick folder of data which Shiro would send overnight delivery to Darrell if his initial research proved an urgent need for him to see it. There was a ledger maintained by Elena herself which Lance wanted to sort through. And there was a set of ornate old warded keys on a big hoop key-ring. Those belonged to the house, though the lawyer had made pains to dissuade Lance and Shiro from going in there without an escort. Shiro closed out his conversation with Darrell and then turned to Lance, whose eyes were on the road.

“Lance.”

“What is it, querido?”

“Don’t go into that house alone.”

Lance turned guarded blue eyes his way and did not deny that the thought had crossed his mind.

“Promise me,” Shiro insisted.

Lance’s lips thinned as his hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I promise I won’t go into that house alone.”

Much later, it would occur to Shiro that what he really should have demanded was for Lance to promise not to go into that house without his husband.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
A few hours later, Lance was kicked back in the hotel suite’s living room with Aunt Elena’s ledger open in front of him and a beer on the end table beside him. They’d had a fun lunch with Kuro and Pidge at a place the younger couple liked that made really good karaage. Then Shiro had taken Caro down to the pool for one of the swimming lessons Nadia Rizavi had organized to increase pool patronage in autumn (and thereby increase patronage at the pool’s attached café). Lance had stayed behind to read the ledger and have himself a brewski from the fridge. Shiro and Caro had eventually returned carrying soft drinks from the café and joined him in the living room to watch a kid’s show, and now those two were passed out in front of the TV, still wrapped in hotel towels around their bathing suits. Lance would have to wake them up soon to get ready for their dinner reservations at Versailles restaurant, where they were planning to meet up with Marco.

Aunt Elena had kept very thorough records. Not just money going in and out, but also names of tenants going back for years, along with their previous addresses, forwarding addresses, belongings left in her care in certain instances, and even private notes about their habits. Aunt Elena seemed like a frustrated busybody – plenty of gossip to share, but nobody to share it with except this ledger. Boy, had she shared it with the ledger. One entry in particular had caught Lance’s attention and held it.

Charles Lance McClain had rented a room there for quite some time before beginning the undercover assignment that would become his last. Aunt Elena had initially not been thrilled to host her stepbrother in her abode, but he had paid his bills, cleaned his space, and not complained about the aged facilities or the food, all of which had earned her grudging respect, as there was a stipulation in her mother's Will that she had to let him live in the house whether she liked it or not. He’d continued to voluntarily pay rent on his room during his assignment investigating Macidus even though he wasn’t living in it during that time period. He must have intended to return to it eventually, which was terribly sad to Lance. What a place to have waiting for a person. After he’d died, his automatic bill payments for rent had eventually stopped, and Aunt Elena had cleared out his belongings and rented his room to someone else.

But then her ledger showed a bit of an anomaly. Instead of putting a notice in the paper of intent to pawn his belongings if he didn’t come and pick them up by a specified date, Aunt Elena had decided to store them indefinitely in the turret room on the house’s third floor. Elena had converted the former third floor servant’s quarters into her own personal en suite, and used the turret room up there as an attic space. Her ledger showed that she usually cycled through abandoned belongings on a strict schedule, but Charles’s belongings remained in the turret room, stored there for years now. He hadn’t left much behind. What was left could easily fit in a duffel bag.

Lance wanted all of it. He didn’t care if they were worthless on paper. They were worthwhile to him. He wanted to hold them in his hands and imagine his father using them. He thought his mother might want some of those items too, particularly some of his clothes which might even still smell like him if they’d remained boxed up all this while. Lance didn’t want to leave without those items, even if it meant having to go inside of that house.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
When the courier had waylaid her in the parking lot, Zethrid had greeted the guy with, “How did you find me?” Because she and Ezor were still paying weekly rent on a kitchenette at the no-tell motel, and a key feature of such a place was that nobody was supposed to tell anybody else who stayed there. But it turned out it was just an inheritance notification form. Great Uncle Quark had kicked the bucket and left her his earthly goods. If she didn’t pick them up from his old digs within a fortnight or whatever she could kiss them goodbye. She was reading over the itemized list as she shouldered into the motel room that she and Ezor had basically taken over from Nyma after she’d moved out.

Ezor was sprawled over the unmade bed applying a top coat over her painted press-on nails. “Hey, how was your thing?”

“I didn’t get to punch anybody.” Zethrid had been assigned to escort an omega who had the sort of face and figure that started fist fights, but the alpha had been so uptight and the restaurant he’d taken them to so stuffy, there had been little chance of a fight breaking out unless Zethrid started it herself to liven shit up.

“That’s a shame,” Ezor said. She knew how much Zethrid liked excitement. It was why they were so perfect for each other.

“Eh.” Zethrid slouched into the chair at the dinette table and tilted it back. “There’ll be another time.”

Rolo still had some spitfires waiting in the wings, maybe Zethrid would get to guard one of them. They weren’t easy to find matches for, but they were more entertaining to hang around for a body who didn’t want to marry them. Zethrid’s finger ran down the list of shit she didn’t want. One pair of bowling shoes that weren’t in her size. A whole bunch of boxer shorts, a moth-eaten old suitcase, a shaving kit she didn’t need. Well hello, what’s this?

“Check this out, I think I just inherited a Maserati!”

“No way.” Ezor leaped out of the bed and leaned over the document in Zethrid’s hands. “It’s probably just a hot wheels car.”

“Even if it is, it could be worth a few bucks, that shit is collectible.”

Zethrid didn’t think it was a toy, though. Supposedly the keys and title were still in the room Great Uncle Quark had occupied before he’d had to be moved out to the VA hospital. The landlady hadn’t cleared it out right away because the L.A. County Department of Public Health wouldn’t let her, and by the time they gave her the all clear she was apparently having her own problems. Zethrid’s last living relative (that she knew of) had thought of her before he’d died. It was her damn duty to go out and collect this car. But duty would have to wait, because it was getting a little late to think about catching a bus, and Ubers were out of her budget.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
_“They’re all shell corporations.”_

Shiro and Lance had brought their coffees into the parlor where they could keep an eye on Caro playing with Poco Rojo in the living room while they video chatted with Darrell on the tablet propped up on the coffee table. He’d been able to discover a lot about the supposedly unsolicited offers Keezor had been so eager to tell them about the day before.

“Were you able to track down who owns them?” Shiro asked.

_“Yes.”_ Darrell’s ‘who do you think you’re talking to’ look was potent even from over 2,000 miles away. _“They’re all owned by Luciano Keezor, Esquire.”_

Shiro honestly couldn’t say he was shocked at that development, but he still couldn’t figure out why Keezor would want the property. “What does he stand to gain by owning an old house next door to a cemetery?”

_“Real estate located next to a memorial park takes longer to sell on average, but it tends to go for a higher price at final sale,”_ Darrell said, which sounded reasonable, but something about this still wasn’t sitting right with Shiro.

“This guy is in a hurry,” he said. “There’s something else going on here.”

_“I trust your instincts,”_ Darrell said. _“Send me those hard copies you told me about and I’ll keep digging. And Lance, as the heir named in the Will you have the right to go in there and inspect the property for yourself whenever you please, the building’s not condemned, but I’d still recommend being careful. The house is old and has seen its share of earthquakes, and the power’s been off for weeks. It’s going to be dark and dusty in there, and there might be vermin.”_

Lance pinky swore he’d be careful. Shiro turned to him after they logged off the video chat.

“Don’t go in there by yourself.”

“I already promised.”

Shiro could tell through the bond sense that he was getting on Lance’s nerves but he couldn’t help it. This situation was making him more and more uneasy. He knew Lance wanted to go in there and collect his father’s things, and he supported that wish, but they just weren’t going to have time for it today and he couldn’t find it in himself to be sorry about that. It was Halloween, and the plan was to go to the Japanese Village Plaza to pick up candy and shop for omiyage to take back to New York with them. Then they were headed over to the Kogane-Garrett’s place for trick or treat, which would probably see them through the rest of the evening, if not the whole night. Shiro was prepared to delay their trip home by another day or two if necessary to get everything done that they wanted to get done.

Lance’s mood had recovered by the time they got to the Plaza. They found gifts to take back for everyone who would expect one, and then went into a food mart for the candy and happened upon Gyrgan Garrett’s grandson working in there. Tommy had presented as alpha and was old enough for a work permit now. He was also mature enough to demonstrate patience listening to the life story of a three year-old while they were trying to check out. That kid was growing up so fast. Why did kids have to grow up so fast?

They took Caro into a family restaurant to order sandos for lunch and Shiro watched her attempt to share her fruit sando with Poco Rojo. He thanked the stars that his daughter wasn’t growing up so fast that she didn’t still think she could give her doll food, even as he tried to clean cream cheese off the doll’s face and just wound up smearing it around while Lance laughed and laughed. Shiro supposed he was entitled to a good chortle. He still didn’t know how Lance managed to keep the doll clean, but he knew he could count on him working his magic at some point later on. Whatever he was doing, it had kept Poco Rojo from developing a permanent food stain in the mouth area for years.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
“Hey, can I borrow some baby shampoo and a pet brush?”

Keith turned from the oven. Hunk had made his jack o’lantern pizza for dinner, which he topped with a blend of cheddar and Muenster and added cut vegetables for the face. The cheese blend gave it that orange look, but it browned faster than mozzarella, so it needed more frequent checking. That was Keith’s excuse for standing in the blast of pizza scent, and he was sticking to it. Hunk was outside double checking the batteries in the LEDs that had been illuminating their real jack o’lanterns all month. It’d suck if one of them went dead on Halloween night.

“Look in Sunny’s bathroom under the sink,” Keith said.

“Thanks man.” Lance headed back there carrying his daughter’s doll in one hand.

Shiro and the kids were in the living room watching _Toy Story of Terror_. Then they were all going to share an early pizza dinner together before getting the children dressed for trick or treat. Keith and Lance would take the kids trick or treating while Hunk and Shiro minded the fort. A lot of the neighborhood kids would wait until full dark before setting off, but Sunny and Carolína were three. Barely sunset was fine for them.

As he looked it over, Keith decided that the pizza was fine too. The crust was golden brown and the cheese was just right. It smelled fricking awesome. There was nothing wrong with eating pizza twice in one week. Especially when Hunk made it at least one of those times.

“Dinner’s ready, guys!”

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Vibiana had made Carolína a woodland sprite costume. Multiple layers of distressed gossamer fabric fluffed from her armpits to her ankles, with straps fashioned to look like vines holding up the bodice, and net-over-wire wings affixed to the back. Caro’s abuela had dip-dyed the costume in leafy shades of green, creating a gradient effect as the color layers gradually deepened over the length of the garment. She’d fashioned a hair garland out of artificial leaves from a craft store. The resin wand was probably from a party supply store.

“Don’t you look pretty.” Lance tamed his little girl’s floof of hair with the garland and then turned her back around to encounter her little girl scowl. “What’s wrong mi cariño?”

“Don’t wanna be pretty,” she pouted. “Wanna be a super hero!” Her blue eyes were stormy above the verdant colors of the costume.

Lance felt like he should have seen this one coming. “Sprites have super powers,” he said. “You can be a hero if you want to be.”

Caro still looked skeptical. “Sprites can flies?”

“That’s what the wings are for, mijita.” Lance bopped the wings for emphasis.

“Dey make a laser?”

What all had Shiro been letting her watch with him when they did their couch potato thing together in the rear parlor? Lance’s eyes fell upon the wand clutched in Caro’s small hand. “Sprites can do magic with their wands, so lasers should be a piece of cake.”

“Okay.” Caro’s smile lit up her face like pixie sparkles. “I be Super Sprite!”

“Quick, Shiro get the camera!”

Shiro rushed in with his cell phone out to get pictures of their child while she was still smiling and her costume was still undamaged. They were in Sunny’s bedroom. Sunny himself was still in the attached bathroom with Keith. He’d been dressed before Caro, but he’d still wanted the mullet hairdo and Keith had been adamant that nobody was taking any scissors to Sunny’s toddler curls. Lance, feeling that Keith might be getting too hung up on thinking he hadn’t previously worn a mullet himself, had advised him to “Just do his hair like you used to do yours.” They’d disappeared in there together and hadn’t been heard from since, aside from some excited toddler chatter drifting through the cracked open door.

Shiro had just taught Caro the appropriate form for woodland sprite laser battle when Keith and Sunny finally emerged from the bathroom. “Blam! Blam!” Caro bounced around the bedroom on slippered feet with her wand held out in front of her in as near an approximation of a weaver stance as her motor skills could handle. “Blam, blam, blam!”

“What is she doing?” Keith asked.

“Shooting lasers out of her wand,” Lance replied. Like, duh.

Keith had outdone himself on Sunny’s outfit. Sunny was dressed in black jeans, red high tops and a black t-shirt with a NASA jacket worn over it. The jacket’s pockets were loaded down with pads and clicky pens and adorned with pins, and the little boy had Keith’s old steampunk sunglasses perched on top of his head to give that overall ‘Keith flying off and doing cool junk’ impression. The real finishing touch though, that element which sold the look as a look, was the hair. Somehow Keith had coaxed the curls at the ends of the child’s hair to go all flippety. Sunny had been right to demand his ‘fishes’ because it tied the whole thing together.

“Let’s roll,” Sunny said, only he still had a touch of rhotacism to his speech so it came out sounding kind of like, ‘less wole.’

Lance just about died of the cuteness. “We should follow him around carrying a bluetooth speaker playing MCR and The Darkness.”

“Lance!”

“I’m just saying.”

Sunny’s rock ‘n roll soundtrack was already playing in Lance’s mind as they all trooped into the living room. Hunk had set out a bowl of Halloween candy and another bowl of popcorn and was flipping through streaming movies looking for something that was appropriate for the holiday but not too gory, in case trick or treaters caught a glimpse of it through the front windows on their way to the porch.

“That one,” Shiro said, pointing out the thumbnail image of an action horror featuring ridiculously pretty actors striking uncomfortable looking poses with stupidly large weapons.

“Shiro, man.” Hunk turned a deadpan look on him. “That looks super cheesy. Like cheese whiz on top of a bowl of cheese doodles.”

“That’s why it’ll be fun,” Shiro insisted.

Hunk thought about it a second, then shrugged and queued up the movie. It was a truth not universally acknowledged that just because a man possessed fine epicurean tastes in many other respects did not mean he could be trusted to pick a tasteful flick on movie night. If this was any indication of the kinds of movies Shiro had been watching with Carolína, then it was no wonder she was so obsessed with over-the-top heroics. Hunk cooed over the children’s costumes and took pictures. Keith loaded up Kosmo’s harness with saddle bags so they’d have a place to put the kids’ trick or treat bags when they weren’t carrying them up on porches. One last round of ‘do you have to go to the potty’ and off they went into the early evening, hand in hand in search of candy.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
The Kinkades’ fenced front yard was an autumn wonderland of googly-eyed bats, derp-faced jack o’lanterns, and really friendly looking scarecrows. It was nowhere near a Sam Holt production at the height of his powers, but Matt and Ryan had an almost four year-old so they probably had to dial it back a little. Pidge stepped through the open gate and hopped up on the front porch, reflecting that she’d dialed it back a little herself. Usually she would have worn zombie makeup with this punk rock outfit, but she wasn’t going as a member of the undead tonight. Not only would she not be allowed into the theme park later if she wore the makeup, but she also didn’t want to scare her nephew more than good fun allowed. He was still at an age where reality and fantasy intersected at a vanishing point.

Matt answered the door dressed as Woody from Toy Story and carrying a bowl full of candy. “Oh, hey, come on in.” He stepped aside to let her past.

“Am I going to infinity, or beyond?” Pidge wiped her steel toed boots on the sisal mat and walked into the vestibule.

“That’s Ryan’s line,” Matt said as he shut the door behind her. “He’s dressed as Buzz.”

Ryan was going to be staying at the house to pass out candy while Matt and Pidge took Banon around the neighborhood. There was a good chance Pidge wouldn’t be in town for the boy’s next Halloween, and possibly several Halloweens after that. She wanted to get her family time in with him while she could.

“Hey, can I have some candy?”

Matt shrugged. “You showed up in a costume, why not?” Then, when Pidge reached in with both hands, “Don’t hog the Skittles!”

Banon came tumbling around the corner in a green T-Rex costume. The tail almost made him overbalance, but he recovered quickly. Gone were the days of ‘oopsie’ spills with Matt or Ryan quickly saying ‘you’re okay’ because they didn’t want him to be afraid of making mistakes. Banon’s coordination was now good enough to regularly wig out his mother from attempts to scale the backyard fence, and even if it wasn’t, he’d internalized the lesson that a trip and fall was not the end of the world.

“Auntie Pidge!”

Pidge knelt like a baseball player to catch up an armload of adorable nephew. His sweet toddler scent had recently shifted to a milder child scent. He’d taken to preschool with an enthusiasm which Pidge understood very well. She sat back on her heels and let him tell her all about the geometric shapes he’d learned that day. His birthday was in just a couple of days, and Pidge was convinced she and Kuro had gotten him the perfect present. Hopefully Matt wouldn’t kill her, but she was really looking forward to teaching Banon how to ride the electric scooter.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
“I hate when you wear that stuff.”

Zethrid paused in dousing herself with raspberry scented blockers to meet eyes with her girlfriend’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. “I’ve gotta spend an hour on a bus. It’ll go easier if I use the blockers.”

The fruitlet of the raspberry bush was not Zethrid’s natural scent. She smelled more like the rest of the plant. The rose-like top note often got her mistaken for omega by alphas who followed it too close to her personal space before they caught the earthier bottom note and realized their mistake. Or her fist, the stupider ones caught that first. She’d already been delayed from this bus ride by a rescheduled tea party where she had to glower next to the client’s butler for two hours. She didn’t want to chance being delayed any further by getting kicked off a bus for rearranging someone’s face.

“How are you gonna get back?”

Ezor was like this every Halloween, uncharacteristically clingy. Some childhood prank gone wrong had her on edge every year when this holiday came around. It had been understood early on in their relationship that Halloween was neither a date night nor a work night, but a night for locking the door and staying in. Zethrid would have preferred to join her in her self-isolation tonight, but the clock was ticking on that inheritance. What if someone else tried to claim it? Great Uncle Quark had been the kind of alpha who’d promise strippers all kinds of bullshit back when he’d still been well enough to come and go as he pleased.

“I’m bringing us home a car, baby,” Zethrid said. No more hoofing it for blocks, riding crowded buses or saving up for rideshares. They were gonna have their own wheels! Maybe she ought to steal some registration stickers on the way out there, just in case Great Uncle Quark’s were expired. If she got pulled over on the way home then she might get busted for driving on a suspended license.

“What if it’s just a toy car?”

“It’s not a toy car.”

Zethrid was reasonably sure she was right about that. Why would a toy car have a title? But if by unlikely chance it was a die-cast miniature or radio operated toy, she’d just hitchhike back or spend the night on a park bench. She had lots of experience at both of those things, and no fear of the night.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Keith had scoped out the neighborhood in advance, so he knew which houses were too scary for the kids to approach. They were able to avoid any frightening encounters, until a small pack of masked older kids who’d been scaring younger children into dropping candy on the sidewalk mistakenly thought that Keith, Lance and their toddlers looked like easy pickings. Kosmo didn’t even get out one good boof before the ferocious hissing of two pissed off omegas sent the rude kids tearing off down the block. Once upon a time Keith would have been right on their heels, intent on tearing off a few chunks before letting them get away from him. Now the instinct to stay within protective range of his child easily overrode the burning desire to teach those kids a lesson on why trying to scare him had been most unwise.

Once upon a time, Keith and Lance themselves would have been out in a neighborhood like this trick or treating in identity obscuring costumes, but they wouldn’t have been trying to scare little kids. Neither of them had ever been inclined to be mean in that particular way, and besides it would have drawn unnecessary attention to themselves. Still young enough to pass for high schoolers with a little cosmetic aid, they used to utilize Halloween for adding sweets to their pantry which they normally couldn’t afford. It was a little ironic that they no longer needed to trick or treat in order to stock up on candy, yet they’d probably wind up eating a lot of tonight’s take anyway. Three year-olds didn’t possess the self-discipline necessary to pace themselves eating candy, but parceling it out for them over multiple nights might wind up accidentally instilling an expectation of being allowed to have candy every night. After taking out all of the choking hazards first, they were planning to let the kids go crazy when trick or treat was over before setting aside some of the leftover candy for the following day; and then Keith didn’t know about Lance, but the rest of Sunny’s haul was most likely going to wind up in a desk drawer in Keith’s office at work.

Keith probably wouldn’t eat all of it, though. Sunny visited him at work often enough that the candy would be a useful distraction whenever the toddler saw one of Keith’s coworkers walking down the hall with a candy bar from the vending machine. The kids had a productive night, charming all the neighbors and enjoying the fantasy element of dressing up to clamor ‘trick or treat’ at strangers. The bulging state of Kosmo’s saddlebags told Keith they’d gotten more than enough to consider packing it in. It was probably best to take the kids home before anything else happened that might threaten to put a damper on the evening’s otherwise fun events. He turned to look down at his son, and found him looking back with star eyes.

“You scareded monsters away, Mama.”

Just beyond him, Lance had a tight grip on Carolína’s hand as she extended her wand out in the direction the miscreants had run. “Blam!” she hollered.

“We scared them off good, didn’t we champ?” Keith ruffled Sunny’s hair and he cheered.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
“You’re letting him keep his candy haul?”

Banon had brought home a bag of candy so heavy that he had to let his mother and aunt take shifts carrying it for him on the return leg home. As soon as they’d gotten inside the house, Matt had separated out all the candies that might aggravate Banon’s soy allergy. Banon’s symptoms were mild and his pediatrician was sure he’d outgrow it. In the meantime Matt wasn’t taking any chances. But once those candies had been removed from the stash, Matt did indeed let Banon keep the rest of it, which the little boy was currently separating into color-coordinated piles on the living room floor while Ryan looked on indulgently. Even with the soy lecithin containing candies removed, there was still a whole heaping lot of candy.

“He’s old enough that he’s not likely to forget the candy exists,” Matt responded to his sister’s question. “He can chew really well now. I think the time has come to let him decide how fast the candy gets eaten.”

Matt’s own memories of childhood were still quite strong. Specifically, the turning point when he’d presented and his mother had cracked down on his personal freedoms in full overprotective mode. As a parent he now understood the panic she must have felt, but he wanted a different outcome for his son – regardless of how he might present – and he wanted to build that relationship of mutual trust early.

“I wouldn’t mind if you took the culled candies home with you,” Matt added. Neither he nor Ryan had a soy allergy, but neither of them had much of a sweet tooth, either.

“Sure, no prob.” Pidge and Kuro both had sweet tooths of legendary proportions. That culled candy probably wouldn’t survive the night.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
“This is the most unsung movie in the whole series,” Lance said as he helped himself to another handful of popcorn.

The kids had, predictably, exercised zero restraint with the Halloween candy. They were presently sleeping it off in Sunny’s room, while their parents cozied up on the cuddle couch together watching a horror movie with the sound muted and the closed captioning on. It was a horror movie that all of them had already seen before. In some of their cases, multiple times.

“It’s not as good as the first one, but it sets up the lore that all the other movies have to acknowledge even if they don’t actually use it,” Keith agreed before crunching on a popcorn kernel.

“I don’t know,” Shiro said from partially underneath Lance, because Lance was practically in his lap. “I think it’s the reboot that doesn’t get enough love.”

“Hard reboot, or soft reboot?” asked Hunk, who was underneath Keith in a similar fashion. “Cause like, the soft reboot is a reunion party, love it.” He and Shiro smacked palms. “But the hard reboot...”

Shiro suddenly had a bunch of shifty eyes on him. “What? I mean, sure the hard reboot had some narrative problems, but it added an interesting new perspective to the franchise.”

“But what about the characters?” Lance asked him while fondly raking fingers through his floof. Oops, might have accidentally gotten a little popcorn butter in there.

“A movie doesn’t need to have likable characters to successfully convey a thematic idea,” Shiro insisted, while Lance tried to swipe the popcorn butter out of his floof with a napkin and probably only wound up spreading it to the rest of his hair. Oh well, c’est la vie.

“A horror movie doesn’t need likable characters to be watchable,” Hunk said, “but to be good? With a horror movie you need somebody to root for or else you won’t remember much of it past the final frame. How many horror movies have you ever recommended to your friends that had no likable characters versus the ones that did?”

Shiro and Hunk then proceeded to hold forth as the professors emeritus of objectively bad movies while their spouses watched on in amusement, until Shiro said something that made Keith drop his popcorn and sit up straight.

“Dude, you did not just suggest that CGI is better than practical effects.”

“No,” Shiro said patiently, “I only suggested that the special effects in the hard reboot were better than in the original. But now that you bring it up, CGI can eclipse practical effects when competently executed.”

Keith made a noise of disbelief. “Practical effects are movie making art!”

“When it’s done well, CGI can be art too.” Shiro was not budging from his position.

“That’s the key factor, though, isn’t it,” Hunk said. “A horror movie budget often can’t afford for the CGI to be done well, while a practical effects artist can make movie magic on a shoestring budget.”

Thus commenced a debate on the pros and cons of big budget versus low budget horror films. A comparison of the earlier versus later works of one particular director entered the conversation, upon which Lance felt compelled to defend a movie he liked, even though he knew it wasn’t a great movie. Or really even all that good, per se.

“Don’t go dragging _The Lost World_. It may be stupid, but it’s fun stupid.”

The conversation then turned to the topic of how stupid a movie had to be before it was no longer fun. The adults continued enjoying each other’s company while their children slept in the next room and the movie played on. Eventually though, the only one still paying much attention to the movie on the television screen was Kosmo; head up, ears trembling and pupils dilating in reaction to each silent jump scare.


	2. The Ghost is Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once the kids are in bed, Halloween really gets underway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're welcome PyroInfinite, and thank you for the comment. :) It made my day!

  
After submitting to a metal detector to prove that the reflective studs on her outfit were just plastic, Pidge moved purposefully through the park to get to the haunted maze. The theme was ‘Omegas in White’ featuring famous legends of omega hauntings from all over the world. The guests were spooked by a scare-actor playing a hitchhiker as they got off the tram. In the line to enter the maze they were ushered through a hall with pictures which changed to show an omega in white appearing over the shoulders of the portraits’ subjects as they moved past them. It was just lenticular printing, but it still helped set the mood. Also setting the mood: evaporative coolers lowering the temperature while carrying a sickly sweet smell as they moved into the maze.

Once inside, they wandered into a tableau of a wedding altar with dried up flowers, on which what looked like a mannequin suddenly looked up and it was a scare-actor playing the bride, who began telling them the story of her death. She had on a hidden mic which projected her voice around the room in a random pattern via hidden speakers. Very clever. The next tableau had a nursery with what sounded like a crying baby in it. Before the guests could get close enough to the crib to confirm if it was actually a doll, a pair of white-gloved hands appeared out of a hidden recess in the wall and snatched the doll, giving the onlookers a good goose scare.

They were encouraged to spread out in the next set, which was decorated to resemble a copse of red-leafed trees, the better for scare-actors to beckon with one normal hand from the misty shadows, then reach with a deformed claw hand for any guests who dared to get too close. The exit to this set led through plastic streamers meant to resemble a waterfall which hid a sprayer that sprinkled the guests as they stumbled through, only to find another scare-actor on the other side. This one was also wearing a wedding dress, much more tattered than the first bride they’d encountered, and he chased the guests out of the room into another narrow hallway where they had to dodge hands coming out of the walls while voices wailing in many different languages played out of speakers on all sides. They were looking for their children, or their lover, their fiancé or their spouse. One of them was asking the guests to build them a house, another was just asking for food and water, and the overall effect was quite disorienting.

It was around this point that Pidge finally caught Kuro’s scent. He had passed through one of the nearby hidden passages fairly recently, probably while taking his break. Pidge was getting closer to his station. She hurried through the sets, barely pausing to take in the scares – except for one set which had a giant ornate mirror in it which turned out to be some kind of an illusion because a scare-actor burst out of it scaring the crap out of everyone, including her. Her heart was still beating fast from that one when she finally stepped into Kuro’s set.

The set was decorated to look like a tatami room, though to Pidge’s now knowledgeable eye, the mats were not made with real rushes. One hundred andon lamps flickered behind paper shields on tables around the room. The flickering was electric, not fire; the better for an unseen hand to douse them swiftly one at the time until the guests stood in a dark room with one andon lamp dimming slowly. The last andon lamp sat on a table next to a small hand mirror lying face up. Pidge didn’t think foreknowledge of the parlor game being referenced here was necessary to find this situation distinctly creepy. It sure helped though.

As the last andon lamp winked out, a shadow loomed, backlit behind a shoji screen. Suddenly, the room was plunged into full darkness, making several guests cry out. Just as suddenly, blue uplighting revealed the absence of the shoji screen and the presence of the scare-actor, tall and ethereally beautiful in white kimono, unbound black hair and blue lips. ｢Give me hot water...｣ He beseeched them in a whispery voice that carried from a hidden mic, arms raised, hands dangling. ｢Give me cold water...｣

Guests ran screaming from the set, but Pidge was momentarily stunned in place. Kuro would have to be a lot farther away from her for her to not recognize him, and yet the illusion of him suffering in want remained wrenching. “Anything,” she said. “I will give you anything that you want.” If he had been a real yōkai she would have promised him her very life.

Kuro winked at her out of one eye surrounded by swoops of indigo and black. ｢It is my last shift, wait for me when cast B takes over and then you can give me a date.｣

Pidge grinned.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Zethrid cased the neighborhood thoroughly on arrival. She didn’t see any sports cars parked on the curb, but maybe that just meant her car was being kept in a garage somewhere. She’d probably have to sift through Great Uncle Quark’s stuff to find the claim receipt. She really needed to get into that house. Only problem was, there was nobody around to let her in. The landlady didn’t seem to have left any caretaker in charge of the place. They couldn’t have at least posted a contact’s name and number on the door?

Frustrated, Zethrid proceeded to make as discreet a circuit of the property as she was able, discreet not really being her specialty. The back door looked like it would give way easily through brute force. The front door too, but she didn’t want anybody to see her using illegal methods to gain access to her legal inheritance. The front of the house faced the street, across which she could see the riparian buffer for a small shopping center. From the lights visible through the trees, that thin barrier didn’t guarantee her full privacy for a little breaking and entering. The house backed up against a manicured shield of oaks covering part of the memorial park next door, easily accessible by hopping the rather low wrought iron fence.

Entry and egress were secured, but now that she was up on the back porch, Zethrid realized she had another problem. The darkened windows could have just meant that the lights had all been turned off to conserve energy, but the depth of the silence was more telling. There was no electricity humming in that house. Zethrid had pretty good night vision, but it wasn’t so good that she was willing to wander blind inside an unfamiliar structure. She needed a flashlight, and she hadn’t brought one with her. If she used the flashlight app on her phone, she’d use up the battery life fast and she might need that phone before the night was over.

There was a 24 hour CVS in that shopping center across the street. Zethrid stepped off the porch to circle back around in that direction.

  
*~*~*~*~*

Pidge and Kuro sat close together at a tiki bar sipping Zombies. Kuro’s was alcoholic. Pidge’s wasn’t. Kuro had dressed back in street clothes but he still had his scary makeup on. The two of them were scrolling through Pidge’s phone looking at adorable pictures she’d taken of Banon on his trick or treat quest, followed by pictures which had been sent to them of Sunny and Caro. First round of snaps showed them dressed up and all smiles, second round showed them with hilariously chocolate smeared faces, and the third round sent just minutes before showed them all cleaned up and fast asleep in a nest.

“They’re still up, we should ask them if they want to do something for Halloween,” Kuro suggested, referring not to the children but to their parents, who had taken and sent the pictures.

At least that’s what Pidge assumed he must have meant. Sure, he was tipsy, but his ability to hold his liquor had become the stuff of legend among their friends. Only Coran was ever able to keep up with him at parties. But it was late enough now that the bar had just announced last call, so... yeah, he was tipsy. All the rum in his system must be messing with his sense of inappropriate times to call people.

“Technically it’s All Hallow’s Day now,” she said.

“We should do something.” Kuro made a cute face rendered uncanny by the makeup. “Please?”

Pidge could never say no to that face, even when it was all spookified. She hit callback on the number the most recent pictures had been sent from. She was glad she’d decided to feed and walk Bae Bae before heading out, because it was looking like they wouldn’t make it back to the apartment for hours yet.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Four out of six people in the house were asleep. The two children dreamed, all cuddled up in the nest. The two alphas snored, heads back on the cuddle couch. The two omegas took beers and the dog out onto the back porch so they could talk without waking any of their sweeties. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion by now that the Shiroganes were spending the night. They were probably going to need to extend their reservations, because everybody was going to be sleepy in the morning and Lance wasn’t leaving until he had collected his father’s belongings.

“It’s the only thing I really want,” Lance admitted. “Everything else could wait until later.”

“I get that,” Keith said seriously, and Lance believed him. Then Keith’s cell phone rang. He checked the caller ID. “Huh. It’s Pidge. At this hour? Maybe I better get that.”

Lance listened to half a conversation for a few seconds before Keith put it on speaker.

_“...so we figured since you guys were obviously awake we’d invite you out to do something awesome. This holiday only comes around once a year, you know, you should grab it by the jack o’lanterns. Maybe we could go TP some statues.”_

_“We should go to a haunted house!”_

_“Tesoro, we were just in one.”_

_“Yes but I was working. We should go to one I don’t work in. We should go to a real one!”_

Either Kuro had overcome his fear of ghosts or he was super drunk. Or maybe both.

“I don’t know of any places we could get into this late without risking arrest for trespassing,” Keith said. “I’m not spending my anniversary in jail on a perfectly avoidable misdemeanor.”

Just then, the flickering light bulb of iffy ideas began to strobe in Lance’s mind. “I know of a spooky house where we can definitely get in without having to do a B&E.”

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Zethrid returned to the back porch with a screwdriver and an As Seen On TV flashlight. She was highly skeptical that it was really military grade, but it had an adjustable beam with enough lumens to fully light up a room, so it was worth paying a little extra because she was probably going to need that. She adjusted the beam to a narrower setting and unscrewed the exterior keyhole plate, then gave the door a solid kick. The old cast iron rim lock came off the other side in one piece and fell to the floor with a clunk. She toed it to the side and let the door fall shut behind her.

The back door led into the kitchen, a dark rectangle made even darker from the privacy film on all the windows, which was kind of weird. Who’d want to sneak through the cemetery to come looking in here, except someone who was going to break in regardless? Zethrid flashed her light around on cobwebbed gingerbread trim. Something smelled putrid. Probably best to the leave that refrigerator door firmly closed and forget about raiding the cupboard. Zethrid moved on.

There was a stately dining room full of the kind of dust catching furniture that made a person want to sneeze just looking at it, and a smaller breakfast room with unfilmed windows offering a lovely view of the weeds in the side yard. Zethrid was careful not to aim her flashlight directly at that window. She didn’t think anybody was really hiding out there in the weeds, but old habits were hard to shake, and some were worth keeping. She passed through a sitting room that smelled strongly of stale tobacco before finding the stairs, the sort with sharp turns that were hard to see around, like in the movie Psycho. Zethrid was a lot more worried about the possibility of falling through treads being used as a snack for termites than a surprise maniac right at that moment. She held onto the extravagantly large newel post as she gingerly tested the first stair.

The stair held. Zethrid kept a grip on the banister as she carefully ascended to the second floor. Great Uncle Quark had lived in unit 2F. She went clockwise around the stair hall shining her light on closed wooden doors with cracked paint jobs, reading the number plates until she found 2F in the back corner on the opposite side of the landing. Under the number plate was a pull knob dead center of the door, and adjacent to that was the outside housing of a privacy latch. Probably a thumb turn.

Zethrid knelt to examine it with the flashlight beam narrowed to a pinprick. Yep, definitely a thumb turn. If she couldn’t jimmy this open with the screwdriver within minutes then she ought to be ashamed of herself.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Keith and Lance looked in on their babes one last time before heading for the front porch to wait for their pickup. Sunny and Carolína still slept peacefully clutching plush dolls; Sunny with his cheek pressed into Chibi Kosmo’s well-worn fur, and Caro with her red doll tucked under one arm. Lance snapped a picture with his phone and copied it to Keith and a few other people with a cute caption. Hunk and Shiro had sprawled across more of the cuddle couch, leaning against each other in the process. Keith snapped a picture with his phone and copied it to everybody they knew, with no caption (it didn’t need one). They wrote a note and left it on the kitchen counter.

_Pidge and Kuro wanted to hang out and we decided to let you guys sleep, we should be back before daylight, XOXO._

That shouldn’t raise any alarms, but hopefully they’d be back before anybody woke up to actually discover it. Kosmo followed them into the foyer and out onto the porch. Keith allowed it, figuring he’d let the dog back into the house when Pidge and Kuro rolled up. Pidge cut her headlights before turning into the driveway just like Keith had asked her to do, and the turquoise Honda Fit wagon coasted to a quiet halt behind Lance and Shiro’s rental. Lance went ahead to jump in the backseat of the Honda while Keith turned around to reopen the front door. He stepped to the side to let the dog walk past him, but Kosmo just stared at him.

‘Go inside,’ Keith mouthed, waving at the foyer like a game show model. Kosmo sat his fuzzy behind down on the porch, making his point clear that he was not going anywhere Keith wasn’t going. Pidge was making incredulous faces at him from the driver’s seat of the Honda. Keith shrugged helplessly. Then he got a text.

It was from Lance. _If doge want 2go bring him w/us_.

Keith rolled his eyes. Alright then, guess the whole Scooby gang was going. He locked up and helped Kosmo squeeze into the Honda’s small cargo area before joining Lance in the backseat, careful to close the doors as quietly as possible. Pidge reversed back out of the driveway in EV mode and didn’t turn on her headlights or gas motor until after they’d cleared the block. Then she turned on the stereo system too.

A dreadfully familiar cowbell clanged through the car speakers. Lance whooped and put his hands in the air, and wound up smacking the ceiling because the hybrid was so compact.

“Are you kidding me?” Keith said. If he’d had a dollar for every dipshit who used to request a lapdance to this song on Halloween he’d have been able to take the holiday off back when he danced at the Purple Imperial.

“No, we’ve gotta have some tunes,” Pidge said. “Set the mood.”

_♬ Everyboday-yuh! ♬_

“This song hardly makes any sense,” Keith complained.

_♬ Rock yo boday-yuh! ♬_

“Yet it successfully captures a feeling,” Kuro said. His dreamy smile suggested he might have been taking full advantage of not being the designated driver.

_♬ Everyboday-yuh! Rock yo boday right! ♬_

“Where are they even back from?” Keith demanded.

“That doesn’t matter, the important part is they’re back,” Lance said. “You gotta let your hair down and embrace the goofier side of life sometimes, Keith.”

_♬ Oh my God we’re back again! ♬_

Keith smirked as he made himself comfortable in the padded backseat, which had been pulled forward a little to make more room for the doggo in the cargo hatch. “Guess I’ll never have to miss out on that as long as you’re around.”

“Yeah, that’s what I just– hey!”

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Great Uncle Quark had a little pentagonal alcove leading into a larger square bedroom. Zethrid sorted through the few books on the alcove’s built-in bookshelf and rifled through the accent chest standing against the opposite wall. She found the bowling shoes and a few other things, but she didn’t find anything pertaining to the car. She decided to check out the bedroom, figuring she could come back and give the alcove a more thorough search if she didn’t find what she was looking for in there. As she moved through the entryway, she caught a glimpse of her own reflection in a wall mirror and it gave her a momentary start.

“Shake it off,” she muttered to herself as she shone the flashlight along fugly wallpaper, wooden wainscoting, and wall sconces designed to resemble chandeliers. The actual chandelier dangling from the ceiling should have been enough chandelier for one room. There was just no accounting for old people taste. The flashlight’s beam found a dresser with a mirror, another one with a towel rack, a brass double bed, and was that a bedpan under there? Oh, man. Zethrid decided to save looking under the bed for last as she approached the dresser with the towel rack on it.

She found a whole lot of underclothes, some bath linens, and a couple of changes of outerwear consisting of denim and flannel. Either Great Uncle Quark had taken most of his clothes to the VA hospital with him, or he’d lived most of his golden years wearing boxers and undershirts around the house. Zethrid thought the latter scenario to be much more likely. She tied off one of the undershirts to turn it into a sack to take the socks away with her. Most people just didn’t appreciate how important socks were, but Zethrid did. She didn’t understand how shoes without socks had ever become a fashion statement, it was so damned impractical and uncomfortable.

Socks secured, Zethrid attached the t-shirt sack to her belt by the armholes and then turned her attention to the dresser with the mirror. There stood her own reflection surrounded by darkness. It was kind of creepy even though she was prepared for it this time. She widened the beam on the flashlight and set it down on the bed, dust motes flying up from the mattress as the slight weight of the aluminum torch settled upon it. She started sifting through the dresser’s contents, finding some more clothes in the bottom two drawers and adding a few more pairs of socks to her collection. The top right drawer had the shaving kit in it, which she left there.

The top left drawer had a bunch of junk in it. Who kept half-used batteries around long enough that they corroded? Great Uncle Quark, apparently. Then she found the key ring with the trident shaped symbol on it. It had a generic looking keyless entry remote on it, along with several metal keys. Hot fucking damn! This had to be it, but where was the title?

Zethrid shoved the keys into her jacket’s inner pocket and kept rifling. If she ever needed or wanted to sell the car, she’d get more cash out of it with that title. She found a bunch of worthless lottery scratchers before finally laying hands on a folded over piece of paper. She took it out and unfolded it, and there, praise be, was the seal of the state of California. She brought it over to the bed and picked up the flashlight, narrowing the beam again to scan down the page. It was a certificate of title for a 1984 Maserati 2 door, and Great Uncle Quark had already signed it over.

Now she just needed to look around to see if there was a garage claim receipt. Title in pocket and flashlight in hand, Zethrid went back to the open drawer and shined the narrow beam in there to see if there were any papers she’d missed. There she met the eight shiny eyes of a big hairy tarantula. The spider reared back and so did Zethrid. It was a little late in the month for mating season, but maybe this big guy didn’t get the memo.

“Thought you were gonna find a girlfriend in that drawer, didja?”

There was one more piece of paper lying face down in the drawer. The spider was sitting on the far end of it. From what she could see of the paper it looked like a ticket for Santa Anita Park, not what Zethrid was looking for, but she had to be sure. Tarantula bites weren’t deadly, just painful. Bravely she leaned forward again, flashlight raised in her left hand. She sang, more to settle her own nerves than to soothe the spider.

♪ “Lookin’ for love in all the wrong places...” ♪

The spider turned his hairy backside to her, and that was fine with Zethrid. She crept her right hand into the drawer and grasped the nearer end of the paper. Maybe she could just snatch it out from under him like that table cloth magic trick. The spider rubbed its back legs on its fuzzy abdomen, sending fine hairs floating up into the glow cast by the flashlight.

♪ “...and lookin’ for traces of what I’m dreamin’...” ♪

Some of those hairs landed on Zethrid’s hand and the burn was intense and instantaneous, like being dusted with fiberglass.

“Aaah!”

Instinctively Zethrid jumped back. She was still holding the paper from the drawer and the fucking spider was still clinging to it. It ran up her stinging hand and onto her arm towards her face. Zethrid yelled, flashlight swinging wildly as she tried to shake the spider off before it reached sensitive exposed skin, accidentally kicking the bedpan out from under the brass bed in her thrashing. One boot got stuck in the bedpan and skidded on its return trip to the floor. Zethrid went down hard enough to knock herself out cold.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
They coasted up to a curb painted green and stared up at the house, a large dark blot in the moonlight. Just the sight of it was enough to bring their argument about which member of Mystery Incorporated they were most like to a screeching halt. Pidge kept insisting she was the Fred because she drove.

“Maybe we should park over at the CVS and sneak back,” Pidge suggested quietly. “Just in case someone spots us and calls the cops. We could pick up some more candy while we’re over there.”

She was currently one zoinks away from being the Shaggy.

“Nah, it’s fine,” Lance said. “Technically I’m the owner, so I can go in there whenever.”

Pidge looked over her shoulder, dash lights glinting off her eyeglass frames. “Technically?”

“I mean, it’s still in probate.”

“So what you’re saying is that the last owner could still come back and tell us to leave.” Keith’s grin was cheeky enough to brighten the dim interior. “But it wouldn’t be enforceable ‘cause she’s technically dead.”

“Kowai desu!” Kuro turned around in his seat. “Keith, don’t scare us before we even get inside the house!” This statement was a little ironic, because Kuro’s own made-up face was nearly as terrifying as it had been that night when they’d pranked a couple of assholes five years ago.

“But it’s more fun that way,” Keith insisted.

Lance remembered the last time he’d been inside the house. He’d met Elena O’Honan in the downstairs library and she’d made such a ghastly face before he’d even finished introducing himself. Then she’d shrieked and chased him back out the way he’d come in, through the front door, all the while carrying on about his eyes, his blue eyes, McClain’s eyes. He’d thought at the time she’d been calling them devil’s eyes, but as he thought back on the memory now it seemed that she’d been saying something else in a language he was not familiar with. It also seemed that the look on her face had not been one of anger. Oh she hadn’t been happy to see him, that had been crystal clear, but neither had she been enraged, exactly.

“If she didn’t want me going in the house then she shouldn’t have left it to me in her Will,” Lance said, resolve reaffirmed.

Four humans and one dog piled out of the mini mystery machine and climbed the front steps to the wraparound porch, flashlights illuminating the weed-lined path. Lance took the hoop of keys out of his jacket pocket and sifted through them for the largest one with the trefoil-shaped grip. That was the key to the front door.

“What are all those other keys for?” Pidge asked, shining her flashlight on the door so that Lance could see the lock better.

“Most of them are probably for the private suites on the upper floors,” Lance replied. “This place was used as a rooming house.”

He opened the stained glass double doors onto a small foyer. The quatrefoil rug he remembered from his one and only previous visit was still there to muffle their footsteps as they crossed it. Keith, who was last in behind Kosmo, tried to close the doors softly to avoid them relatching, but they clunked shut behind him anyway. Lance wasn’t too worried about that. He had all of the keys, they shouldn’t have any trouble getting back out again. On their right through a cased opening was the library, and on the left the drawing room.

Straight ahead and across from the drawing room was the stair hall. Due to the sharp turns, a person climbing the stairs might be glimpsed through the balusters, but once on the upper floor landing could no longer be seen from the bottom floor (and that was even taking the present lighting situation into account). No wonder this style of house was so popular for horror movies. A wool carpet runner continued to soften their tread as they approached the landing.

Pidge came up to stand beside him. “We’re going up there?”

“Yup,” Lance said. “Going up to the second floor and then taking another set of stairs to the third.”

Keith came up on his other side. “Does anybody else smell raspberries?”

“I smell them,” Kuro said as he stepped up beside Pidge.

Lance took a deep breath and caught a saccharine sniff of artificial berries. “Yeah, I smell it too. Maybe the lawyer tried to use some air freshener in here.”

“It does smell like blockers,” Kuro agreed.

“It smells familiar,” Keith said, before his dog bounded up the stairs ahead of them. “Hey, wait up Kosmo.”

They caught up to the dog on the second floor landing, where he stood with his nose pointed at the closed door for unit 2F.

“Your dad stay in there?” Keith asked.

“No,” Lance said, “he was in 2B, but none of his stuff would still be in there now. All of it should have been moved to the turret room. We’ll have to use the servant’s stairs to get up there.” Lance walked past the dog to unlock the door to the hidden staircase tucked catty-corner to the larger of the second floor bathrooms at the very end of the stair hall. The documents the lawyer had given them had included the house’s blueprints, and Lance had studied them well. “This goes all the way down to the kitchen if we need to use the back door.”

“All right, come on Kosmo, we’re going up some more stairs.”

If Kosmo could speak human he might have told them they were bananas, such was the expression conveyed by his eye rolling half-turned pose.

“One more floor buddy,” Keith said, and with a grumble Kosmo obeyed.

The servant’s stairs were tight quarters in darkness that felt almost solid, with no windows and the only low level source of natural light coming from the unseen room above. They followed the orbs of their flashlights up the steep winder staircase, slowly and carefully as the risers were shaped in a manner conducive to stumbling and there was no banister to cling to. Lance wished that Aunt Elena had thought to add some battery powered motion sensor lights in here. At least she’d had padded carpet installed on the treads. If anybody did manage to trip on a riser they’d have a slightly less bumpy fall.

The stairs opened directly onto the third floor parlor, and as Lance shone his flashlight around he could see why this space could have been reserved for the servants in a previous era. In spite of its ideal location for avoiding noise pollution and the higher vantage point out of the dormer windows, it also had low, slanting ceilings which would have felt confining to any residents over six feet tall, and might have also been unappealing to a generation of people who enjoyed their wall décor extravagant. Apparently the dearth of decorating options hadn’t bothered Aunt Elena, who had placed a sideboard, a cupboard and phonograph cabinet up against the low walls on that side of the house. A cottage chair with a needlepoint footstool sat ready next to an occasional table with an ashtray and a dusty paperback book resting on it. Lance picked up the book and shone his flashlight on the cover. It was _The Moonstone_ by Wilkie Collins.

“That belong to your dad?” Pidge asked, peering over Lance’s shoulder.

“Nope,” Lance said, and he placed the novel back on the table and proceeded to the door to Aunt Elena’s bedroom. According to the blueprints, they’d have to walk through there to get to the turret room. The fake raspberry smell had completely dissipated once they’d entered the servant’s staircase, to be gradually overtaken by the smell of stale cigarettes, which Lance hoped wasn’t clinging to his clothes. He tested keys under Pidge’s helpful flashlight until the one with the heart filigree grip opened the door.

The bedroom was narrower, and rather simply furnished for one belonging to an elderly beta woman who was essentially the lady of this manor. There was a twin bed, a tallboy, a bureau and a writing desk, all of them of a rustic style. The bed and window dressings were plain eyelet lace, now cobwebbed, and there were no rugs to take the chill out of the hardwood floors on a cold morning or night. She did have a small chandelier as her overhead light, and handsomely framed portraits of people Lance didn’t recognize on the sloping walls, but the overall effect was of a prim space used mainly for sleeping. It didn’t even smell much of cigarettes in here. If Aunt Elena had a sanctuary for conscious repose in this house it was most likely the parlor behind them; or possibly the turret room which should be somewhere ahead of them.

Lance shone the flashlight around and found an open door leading into a bathroom with porcelain fixtures and a single window, its presence explaining the narrowness of the bedroom. He moved the flashlight’s beam to the adjacent wall and there he found a closed door with an arched frame. That had to be it. He stepped forward and tested keys while Keith shone a flashlight on the lock for him. The correct key turned out to be the one with the tree of life in an endless knot pattern on the grip. The door opened with a creak, their flashlit shadows flowing ahead of them like pooling water.

The turret room had five tall windows, one for each exterior wall of its hexagonal shape. As the moon was bright and this room was above the tree line, it let in plenty of moonlight, backlighting the dark shape of a woman across the floor. Three short screams burst out as four flashlights found the shape. It turned out to be a dress form mannequin wearing a long black dress with ruffle and bow accents on a tubular shape, indicating it to be probably of 1970's vintage. There was a matching fascinator perched on top of the mannequin, its feathers and mesh having given the impression of a head with hair before the light revealed its true form.

“Talk about your _Dark Shadows_ moments,” Keith said. He was the only one who hadn’t screamed. “Lance, you got any idea how your aunt organized this place?”

“Yeah,” Lance said once he got his breath back. “She organized the piles in a rough circle in the same order as the tenant rooms, plus one extra pile for her own belongings.” He nodded toward the dress form mannequin. “I’m gonna take a stab in the dark and assume that’s her pile over there.”

“Then that must be your dad’s stuff right there.” Keith aimed his flashlight a couple of piles to the right of the mannequin.

“Unless she went counterclockwise,” Pidge said. “Then it’s that pile over there.” She aimed her flashlight a couple of piles to the left of the mannequin.

Both stacks of boxes looked modestly sized in the dark, meaning it could have been either one of them. “I’m gonna take a look at this pile first,” Lance decided, walking over to join Keith who was already standing over the clockwise boxes he’d zeroed in on. “He was ex-military, his name might be stenciled in the clothes he left behind. Darrell says it’s a hard habit to break.”

“My dad used to do that too,” Keith said as he shined his light over the sides and tops of the boxes, probably looking to see if any of them had been written on in marker. Kosmo trotted in and out of flashlight range, sniffing and whuffling.

“We’ll check these out while you’re doing that,” Pidge said, and she and Kuro went over to the stack of boxes in the counterclockwise direction.

The next few minutes were composed of shuffling, murmuring, bouncing lights and the scrape of cardboard boxes being moved and opened. Aunt Elena had not written on the outsides of any of the boxes, probably counting on her own inner map of the room and memory of its contents to keep things organized. Charles McClain had, however, retained his habit of stenciling his initials on the inside seams of his clothes. Keith had found the right pile. Lance picked up a barn jacket, gave it a deep whiff and detected just a hint of whiskey in the lining. If he could wrap these clothes up well enough to preserve the scent, his mother would be thrilled.

Lance unfolded the duffel bag he’d brought along with him, and he and Keith made short work of unpacking the under-filled boxes and tightly packing the duffel while Kosmo watched on. Their flashlights kept catching his eye shine and a blaze of white on his chest in a way that was weirdly adorable. When they had the boxes emptied and the duffel filled, there was only one thing missing, but Aunt Elena had not left its whereabouts too mysterious. Lance lifted an index card out of the bottom of the last box. ‘R.i.S.R.’ was written on it.

“The ring must be in the secret room,” Lance surmised. Between broad hints in Aunt Elena’s ledger and a slight discrepancy of square footage on the blueprints, it wasn’t a big leap to deduce that she’d had a secret room in the house, nor that the secret room (if it could really be called a room) was accessible through the larger of the two bathrooms on the second floor. As far as being a secret squirrel went, Aunt Elena had not been super at it.

“Commemorative ring?” Keith asked. “From the Navy, maybe.”

Lance shrugged. “I’m not sure.” Aunt Elena had it appraised and had noted in her ledger that it was real sterling silver and iolite worth around seventy dollars, but other than that he had no clue.

“Hey,” Pidge said, “you guys might want to take a look at this.”

Lance hefted his duffel as he and Keith joined Pidge and Kuro in the center of the room with Kosmo at their heels. Pidge and Kuro had their flashlights aimed at the floor. Under a layer of dust they could just make out three rings of painted symbols on the hardwood. The outermost ring appeared to be zodiacal symbols, inside which was a ring of alphabet letters, within which was a ring of numbers, all in fading white paint. Right in the center was a blue dot, the paint crackled with age.

“It looks sort of like a tracing board,” Lance said. There had been a tracing board painted on the floorboards of the house his cousin Barros had grown up in; an image of esoteric symbols bounded by the four directions. Barros used to claim that Bisabuelo Arnaldo had painted it there.

“It looks more like a talking board to me,” Pidge replied. “What do you know about the history of this place?”

Not enough, it would seem, in spite of his study of the ledger. “I know Aunt Elena inherited the house from her mother Rosaleen, who inherited from her grandfather Rowan, who was the one who’d had the house built for his family. It was Elena who turned it from a private residence into a rooming house.”

It had been in the hands of the same family all this time, well over a century now, before passing into Lance’s possession. Even Rosaleen’s marriage to Charles’s father had not interrupted the line of inheritance. Though they had not had any children between the two of them, Francis Charles ‘Charley’ McClain had outlived his slightly older wife by several years. Rosaleen had still seen fit to leave the house, its contents and the entire plot it sat upon to her daughter alone in her Will, giving Charley and his son only permission to live out the rest of their days in the house if they so chose. Charley had taken up the free rent offer. Chip had joined the navy straight out of high school, and when he’d returned to this house years later he had made a point of signing a lease and paying rent.

“Spiritualism was pretty popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,” Pidge said. “Maybe one of them was a practitioner.”

“They might have held séances up here,” Keith said.

“Imawashii,” Kuro whispered.

“How about let’s go find my dad’s ring,” Lance said.

He had most of what he’d come for and he was starting to get the willies. Some of Aunt Elena’s shorthand in her ledger regarding residents who’d terminated their stays with no forwarding address made an eerie kind of sense now that he knew she’d had a talking board in her turret room. His imagination flashed on a picture of her alone up here, using her talking board by candlelight. Sitting up here with her former tenants’ belongings all around her, before she’d disposed of them. Except for Chip’s, for some reason. Yep, Lance was ready to get out of there.

“I agree with Lance,” Kuro said immediately. “If we hurry, we might make it to a drive-thru before they change to their breakfast menu. I’m still hungry for dinner.”

The Halloween candy they’d demolished on the drive over must not have made much of a dent in Kuro’s drunchies. The group filed back out of the turret room and Lance pulled the door closed behind them. Did the silhouette of the dress form mannequin shiver out of the corner of his eye as the door fell shut? Nope, not gonna look. Lance fumbled the tree of life key into the lock and twisted it without waiting for one of his compatriots to hold a flashlight up for him. His heart was still in his throat when he locked Aunt Elena’s bedroom door with the filigree key, but it was back in his chest and beating more steadily by the time they reached the stair landing.

They carefully descended the servant’s stairs, and though Lance would have been grateful to have another locked door between him and the turret room (and that mannequin) he didn’t close up the staircase, just in case they needed to leave through there for some reason. Living in the omega hostel had taught Lance the lesson that having multiple exit strategies was always a good idea, no matter how low key the situation appeared to be at first glance. Then Kosmo once more took up a position in front of the closed door to 2F, the fur on his scruff puffing out as he stared at it.

“Should we check in there?” Keith asked.

“There shouldn’t be anything in there that we need,” Lance said. “The hidden room should be in here.”

Whatever was causing Kosmo’s fascination, Lance was reasonably sure he could live without knowing. He led the others into the bathroom, which had a clawfoot tub, a pull chain toilet and a pedestal sink fussily decorated with a floral skirt. Across from the sink and next to the tub was a built-in linen cabinet which looked like it had been added at a later point in the house’s history. Its stained wood and vertical lines were out of time with the painted curlicues lavished upon the rest of the bathroom. Lance opened the top cabinet door and started moving folded dusty towels out of his way while his friends shined their flashlights into the small dark space.

“That looks kind of shallow for a linen cabinet,” Pidge remarked.

“And you’d be right,” Lance agreed as he felt around on the back wall underneath the shelves. He was completely unsurprised to discover that the middle shelf was loose. Lance pushed it up and out of his way and there was the keyhole in the beam of his flashlight. It was very small. Lance decided to test the smallest warded key, the one with the grip in an unassuming circular shape.

That turned out to be the correct key. The lock clicked open and the linen cabinet fell inward to grant them entrance to the secret room. Which was really more of a secret closet, as it was just big enough for one adult to stand comfortably inside it. Two adults could stand awkwardly inside it. Three adults would really be pushing it, and four was out of the question.

“I will guard the hall,” Kuro decided. Kosmo went with him.

“I’ll stand lookout in the bathroom,” Pidge said. The bathroom should give her a good vantage point for keeping an eye on both the secret room and her spouse exploring out in the hall.

“I’ll give you my light,” Keith said, holding his flashlight at shoulder level so that Lance could better see the shadow box shelves lining the inside of the secret roo– it was a secret closet, that was what Lance was going to call it, even though he was sure Aunt Elena’s shorthand code literally stood for ‘secret room.’ 

“Thanks Keith.”

“No problem.”

Aunt Elena had quite a collection in her secret closet. Medals, shells, badges, pins, and all sorts of little mementos adorned the dusty shelves. Lance worried for a moment that he’d have trouble guessing which item was actually his father’s ring, but as he peered closer he saw that each shadow box shelf had a little card in it with someone’s initials on it. After gazing at several boxes, it became clear that she had made an effort to keep them in alphabetical order. Lance actually found himself wishing he had more time to give the memories of these people left behind more due, but the desire to get clear of the house was growing stronger. He scanned the shelves until he found the shelf with his father’s initials on its card, and there was the ring.

It had most likely once been a signet ring, but it had been reworked to remove the engraving from the outside of the band. The iolite oval had been reset into the silver, and something had been etched inside the band at its widest part, which was under the setting. Lance held it up in the beam of Keith’s flashlight to read the spidery letters. _El amor todo lo puede_. There was no name to go with that sentiment, and yet Lance felt certain of his father’s intentions: he’d been planning to make a promise using the only ring he could probably lay hands on at the time. Lance felt his tear ducts prickling and blinked rapidly.

“Lance?”

Lance looked over his shoulder at Keith, his face partly shadowed by the angle of the light. “It was for my mom. I just know it was.”

Keith chirruped comfort at Lance, and Lance chirruped back.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Kuro followed his flashlight’s beam around the second floor hallway at a leisurely pace. The group had already been through here once, leaving a thin layer of their combined scents in the wool carpet runner, and Pidge was also near enough to catch her scent easily through the open bathroom door. Kuro felt safe as he explored the hallway with its closed doors that had door knobs right in the middle of them, the stair landing with its carved finials, and the curious wall coverings comprised of wooden boards halfway up the walls, above which was wallpaper in a seigaiha pattern. Why did there need to be two different coverings? Did they run out of wallpaper halfway through?

The second floor landing of the main staircase had an ornament dangling from the ceiling. They’d passed right underneath of it without noticing on their trip up from the first floor. A large orb of blown glass, blue with green sworls, it reminded Kuro of the baubles on the Holt and Kinkade family Christmas trees, except that it was more opaque and much bigger, probably meant for reflecting light from a much larger source than twinkle strands. What an unusual place to put such an ornament. It couldn’t possibly catch any daylight in its current position. Maybe it captured light from the overhead lamps when the power was on.

Kuro moved his flashlight around again and found Kosmo once more standing at attention in front of the door to unit 2F. Kuro meandered over to stand next to the dog. The raspberry scent hovered more persistently in this spot than elsewhere in the hall. Kosmo shuffled and grumbled deep in his chest. Kuro ran his flashlight over the door and noticed what had not been obvious at a casual glance: the latch was not secured, so the door sat just slightly off kilter in the jamb. This door was not locked, or even fully closed.

From the other side of the door came a low groan and a rattle. It sounded like someone in pain, and Kuro was letting himself in before thought caught up to him. It was only after he’d fully entered the suite that he remembered what Lance had taught him five years ago: a gaijin ghost could be recognized by the sounds of moaning and clanking chains.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Zethrid came to with a thundering headache. She turned her head in the dark and instantly regretted it. Groaning through the brief bout of dizziness, she scrabbled her hands toward the pinprick of light which had to be her flashlight. The fact that she remembered that much gave her hope that her concussion wasn’t that bad. Her hands found cool metal, but it wasn’t the flashlight. It was the bedframe, which rattled when she used it to haul herself up to her knees.

If she had her bearings correctly, then the flashlight had rolled under the bed when she’d fallen and then emerged out the other side. Zethrid hauled herself around the corner of the bed frame by feeling along the brass footboard, then crawled on hands and knees to clumsily reclaim the flashlight. The bed pan, still stuck to her boot, scraped along the floor as she went. It was coming right off again as soon as she could see what the hell she was doing. She grabbed at the flashlight but accidentally picked it up too close to the bezel and it winked out in her hands. Groaning again, she fell back against the bed frame and started thwacking the flashlight in her palm in confused hopes of reactivating the beam.

Suddenly the door swung open to reveal a shadow standing there, just as the flashlight beam switched on to reveal a face that would star in Zethrid’s nightmares for weeks to come. She’d never tell anyone – not even Ezor when she told her about this later – but Zethrid screamed like a little kid. The shadow screamed back, and was joined by the braying of a creature with glowing eyes standing at the creature’s hip. Zethrid reflexively kicked out and the door swung shut as she nearly folded herself in half trying to fit under the brass bed. If that spider was hiding under there, then he’d best move over because he was about to have a roommate.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Just as Kuro remembered the auditory clues that a gaijin ghost was present, bright light hit him right in the face. Squinting past the dazzle, he saw the large, dark shape crouched down beside the bed and screamed. The shadow screamed too, and Kosmo began to bay. Kuro reached down for the comfort of the dog’s warm fur as he stumbled backward into the suite’s alcove, then he turned and ran into the hall and almost ran over Pidge.

“I heard you screaming, are you alright?”

Kuro ran right into her strong little arms. “It really is haunted!”

Behind her, Keith and Lance rushed out of the bathroom, Lance once more strapping his duffel bag over his shoulder.

“I hear Kosmo barking,” Keith demanded, “what’s going on?”

At the sound of his favorite human’s voice, Kosmo bounded out of the alcove yipping for attention.

“There is a ghost in 2F!” Kuro hiked a surprised Pidge up off the floor and hotfooted it over to the main staircase. “We must flee!”

“My glasses fell off! Kuro, I can’t drive without my glasses!”

“Then I will drive!”

Pidge’s squirming was terribly distracting at a moment of utmost urgency. With her in one arm and his flashlight in the opposite hand, Kuro could not grasp the stair banister and feared he would have to slow down. But then Keith forged ahead of him, flashlight at the ready, and Lance said “Behind you” before laying a steadying hand on his back (which was fortunate because Kuro would have probably made a hole in the ceiling if Lance hadn’t warned him first). Kosmo wriggled in front of Lance and to act as a stabilizing weight against Kuro’s side. Together, they made it back to the first floor landing and across the foyer in less time than it had taken Kuro to unwisely open the door which had so captivated the dog and walk into the ghost’s domain.

“Is anyone else feeling silly right now?” Keith asked as he stood with his flashlight on the door so that Lance could unlatch it and let them out.

“No,” Kuro said. “Gaijin ghosts are attached to places, they don’t move around. We must leave here. Then we’ll be fine. We can make Ani come back and get Pidge’s glasses when it’s daylight.”

“We’re going,” Lance assured him, as he ushered them all out on the porch and locked the door behind them.

They turned to rush down the steps and there met the sight of another flashlight being held on them by a tall man who was had a cell phone in his other hand.

“You’re going to want to put the smaller child down and then you can explain to me what you’re all doing here before I call the authorities.”

Pidge raised herself up on Kuro’s shoulder to squint myopically at the man. “Who are you calling a small child?”

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Zethrid hugged the floor, flashlight clutched to her breast like it could keep her warm or some shit, as the braying and ululating noises drifted away. She lay there another few moments until it finally dawned on her that she was hiding under the bed like a big baby. What happened to the big bad alpha who wasn’t afraid of the dark? It was another few moments after that before she felt wretched enough by this thought to begin unfolding herself from under the bed and dislodging the bed pan (thankfully empty) from her boot. Her hand under the flashlight’s glow was as pink and sore as that time she’d fallen in poison ivy on a camping trip. She felt around checking her jacket’s inner pockets to reassure herself that the title and keys were still in there.

She hauled herself up off the floor, once more using the brass bed frame for ballast, and cautiously made her way through the alcove to the hall. It had occurred to her while she sat questioning her life choices under the bed that she might not have seen an actual ghost, but a living human being in a Halloween costume. Could have been a looter, but more likely it was a curious neighbor. A curious neighbor with a real big dog. Therefore it made sense to get out of the house while the getting was good. She’d acquired the car’s title and keys, that should be enough to claim ownership once she found out where it was parked.

As she crept into the hall, she noticed a door that hadn’t been open when she’d gone into 2F. She shone her flashlight in there and found stairs. Back stairs, probably leading closer to the door she wanted to exit from, which was a lucky break. Leaning heavily against the wall, she lurched down the narrow staircase that just sort of ended at a door instead of a landing. Oh hell, she was probably going to have to pick another lock. But when her hand closed around the door knob it turned easily, letting her out into the rancid kitchen.

She held her breath as she crossed to the back door and let herself out onto the porch. Once she was outside she sucked in a deep breath before puking over the porch railing. Then she heard voices, getting fainter as their owners grew more distant from her position. She was about to bless her good fortune before she saw their flashlights, moving off into the cemetery. Crap, crap, crappity crap, she couldn’t go out that way now. Clicking off her own flashlight, she hunched over and quickly made for the tall grass in the side yard.

The sun damaged roof of an abandoned car caught her eye as she ducked into the overgrown yard, so she started weaving in that direction, thinking it might be a convenient place to hide until the coast was clear. As the moonlight’s reflection on chrome trim guided her way, Zethrid began to see signs that someone had tried to brown a path through the weeds. Her mother used to clear a footpath to their mailbox that way using salt and vinegar sprinkled from a rusted old watering can. Maybe that car hadn’t been abandoned there to be reclaimed by the elements after all. As the weeds parted to reveal the boxy corner of a trunk painted a shade of maroon that was almost brown, Zethrid started to get an uncomfortable suspicion. Acting on this suspicion, she hunkered down within sight of that corner of unblemished paint to take the key ring out of her inner pocket.

She risked turning the flashlight back on at its weakest setting to glance at the buttons on the remote, then pushed the button with the unlock symbol on it. She heard the distinct double chirp and saw the tail lights flash. Suspicion confirmed. Well, it wasn’t realistic to expect that Great Uncle Quark had been able to maintain a sports car in mint condition. At least the car’s battery wasn’t dead? She crouched forward to check the license plate, and that’s when she got a clear view of the car’s make and model on the lip of the trunk.

She was now the proud owner of a legally registered BiTurbo, the unsexiest Maserati model to probably ever exist. She tried not to feel too bitter about it as she fumbled around the driver’s side to grasp the door handle. The driver’s side door fell open with a creaky sigh, like it was asking her if she really wanted to do this. Zethrid slunk down into a bucket seat which was probably real leather from the scent and stiffness. Real leather that Great Uncle Quark had taken about as good care of as he had the car’s roof. The interior had that petroleum perfume unique to old cars, which thankfully didn’t turn her stomach.

Hopefully Great Uncle Quark’s negligence hadn’t extended to the car’s engine. Zethrid poked through the keys until she found the one that fit the ignition. The engine turned over with a throaty hum that indicated Great Uncle Quark had been faking his emissions tests somehow in order to keep this car’s registration up to date. Figuring out her own solution to that problem would have to wait for another day, Zethrid was ready to get the hell out of there. She turned on the headlights, revealing that the weeds had been browned in front of the car as well as behind. Seeing a clear path to the street, she peeled out and found out the reason why Great Uncle Quark had kept this old lady so far past her prime.

She cornered like she was on rails.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Spurr Family Mortuary (with cremation services) was housed in an unassuming single storey brick building nestled between evenly spaced oak trees. The family also owned and ran the memorial park surrounding the mortuary, but the memorial park had been given the more restful name of Spiritual Reflections. Someone in Memor’s family line had seen the necessity of ensuring that their business name was visible from the street, and to that end had placed a sign in front of the mortuary building. Lance figured the sign had cleared the tree tops back when it had been erected, but that must have been some time ago because that was no longer the case. He would have never realized that the building was even back there if Memor hadn’t led him and his friends to it on a paved path winding through the memorial park. They skirted the front of the building with its picture window through which they could see a casket showroom, and entered by a side door into a cozy meeting room with a kitchenette.

When Memor Spurr had confronted them on the wraparound porch, he had identified himself as the current owner-operator of the property next door. He’d said that he’d noticed flashlights in the windows and come over expecting to find kids daring each other to go into the house as a Halloween prank. The sight of one of them in scary makeup carrying a smaller one over his shoulder had seemed to point in the direction of him being correct about that. Lance had been quick to introduce himself and his friends and explain their presence.

“You’re Chip’s boy?” Memor had searched Lance’s features and then smiled at him. “How delightful to meet you! Won’t you come over for a cup of coffee?”

Seeing as the man had known his father, Lance had wanted to say yes. He had looked around at the faces of all of his friends first, to check in with them. He got nods all around, to his undying gratitude. So off they’d gone and now here they were, in a room where people probably usually met to discuss burial arrangements for a loved one. Memor, a tall older beta with limbs so gangly he didn’t seem to know what to do with them half the time, had coffee already brewed when they walked in, and music playing on the sound system. As he served them, he explained that he was a bit of a night owl by nature, but particularly on Halloween.

_♬ I will get by... ♬_

“Kids come out here to play pranks sometimes,” he said as he joined them at the oval table. “With Elena’s house falling empty this year, it occurred to me that the neighborhood might become an especially tempting target for mischief and I felt it incumbent upon myself to be on guard.” He paused as they all sipped coffee. _♬ Every silver lining’s got a touch of grey... ♬_ “I am sorry to hear of Chip’s passing. He was a good man, always generous with his time. I live here alone, you know, in an apartment at the back of the building. If Chip saw my light on late at night he’d always check in on me. My own children are scattered to the four winds since the family business has grown stagnant. I’ve appreciated his thoughtfulness.”

“I thought your industry was recession proof,” Pidge said, then, “ow” as Kuro kicked her under the table.

Memor just smiled over his coffee cup, unruffled. “It’s alright, there’s no harm in the question. The mortuary can certainly support me until I’m ready to retire. By then my youngest daughter Pearl will have finished her apprenticeship and be ready to take over here. She’s the only one of her siblings who has ever expressed any interest in the family business, but we both agreed that she’d learn more from a facility that offered a greater variety of services than we can here. With our cemetery nearly full we’ve little room for expansion at this point. We’ll have to begin relying on the perpetual care fund soon. I can’t really blame my other children for wanting to strike out on their own but I pray none of them ever gives in to the temptation to sell after I’m gone. The Supreme Fortune Group has been hounding me through their lawyer, but I just don’t trust them to do right by the departed.” He paused for another coffee break. _♬ We will get by... ♬_ “I can’t rightly explain why I feel that way, but something about that Keezor fellow puts my back up.”

“He’s been urging me to sell too.” Lance recognized The Supreme Fortune Group as one of Keezor’s shell companies. “What is he after, buried treasure?”

“The first time I spoke with him about it, he told me that his clients want to develop this area as a planned community,” Memor said. “We’re in a good location for one but it would require moving the entire community of the dead out first. When I asked him which memorial parks had agreed to take them in, he didn’t have a satisfactory answer for me. Therefore I said no. But he hasn’t given up.”

“Has the guy never seen _Poltergeist_?” Keith grumbled.

“Perhaps not.” Memor smiled again, a softly wistful expression on his hangdog face. “I can withstand him as long as I’m alive, but I worry that there may come a time when my children or grandchildren will find his offer too attractive against the diminishing returns on our property.”

“What if I sold Aunt Elena’s house to you?” Lance asked. He had been thinking of making an offer to the owner of the cemetery, and now here was an opportunity to do so. “Would her land give you enough room to expand your business?”

“Why, yes.” Memor straightened out of the slouch which seemed to be his more customary posture. “We could get quite a few more plots from the land, and the house would be a major boon.”

“The house?” Pidge looked skeptical. “You wouldn’t want to tear it down for more plots?”

“No,” Memor said, excitement picking up, which on him looked like mild enthusiasm. “The house has wonderful bones. I’ve been inside many times. Elena used to invite me over for tea with her and her tenants. It would make a perfect funeral parlor. We could offer so many more services than I’m able to offer with the facilities I currently have. We could even hold wakes!”

“I wonder why she didn’t just pass the house on to you?” Lance said, leaning his chin on one hand.

“She felt she owed a debt to your father,” Memor explained. “You see, she was contacted about the presence of his cremains by the coroner’s office, but she declined to collect them. She was afraid that if she did so then he would haunt her. I hope I won’t alarm you by informing you that her mother and grandmother were both spiritualists and active practitioners of the occult arts. Elena was a believer herself, though never as active in the arts as they were.” Memor sipped coffee. “Instead it was the guilt over allowing her stepbrother’s cremains to languish without a proper burial that wound up haunting her. When she drew up her Will, she had decided that leaving the property to you was a way for her to finally atone.”

“You seem to know a lot about it,” Keith remarked.

“Well I should,” Memor allowed. “I am the executor of her Will, after all.”

“You are?” Lance sat up, free hand falling to the table. “That skeezy lawyer told me it was him!”

“If by skeezy lawyer you mean Mister Keezor, then no, Elena would not have trusted the man to assist her with a parking ticket, much less settle her estate,” Memor replied. “It was I to whom she entrusted the Will, and I who filed that Will at the county clerk’s office, and not incidentally it was also I who laid her to rest here at Spiritual Reflections according to her expressed wishes. I did wonder why I never heard back from probate court after filing the Will, though. That’s rather curious.”

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
By the time Zethrid parked at the no-tell motel, she was feeling pretty pleased with her inheritance. The car might look like it had been driven out of a dystopian nightmare, but it performed like a utopian dream. It also ate up half a tank of gas just coming straight home from The Jewel City, but hell, it was still better than walking in L.A. The great love of her life had been less impressed with the car, though she had offered her lap for Zethrid to rest her sore head like a hero returning from strife. But no sooner had Zethrid breathed a sigh of “I’m home” and closed her eyes than Ezor squealed loudly enough to make her wince.

“You brought me a pet! I knew you wouldn’t forget me for some old car on Halloween!”

“A pet?” Zethrid lurched up onto her elbows. “I did?”

It was that damn tarantula. It had hitched a ride in Zethrid’s sock bag and waited until she was all relaxed to reveal itself, like the little killjoy it was. Ezor laid her hand down for the fuzzy bugger to crawl on, which it did, pretty as it pleased.

“Be careful petting that thing,” Zethrid warned her, “its got hair like stinging nettles.”

“It’s just the hairs on his cute little butt that are irritating.” Ezor let Mister Cute Butt crawl up her arm, smiling away. “He’ll only urticate if he feels threatened.”

“I don’t care if he pees on me as long as he doesn’t shed on me again.”

“Urticate, not urinate.” Ezor batted her eyelashes in that way which meant she was about to ask for a big favor. “He needs a habitat.”

Zethrid knew her love wasn’t just talking about putting him outside. “I don’t think anything’s still open at this hour.”

“There’s a 24 hour super center up on Sunset,” Ezor said, because of course there was and of course she knew about it. “They won’t have the best stuff, but if you go in the garden section and look for a terrarium and some moss and rocks, that should be alright for the short term. It’s a good thing our landlord doesn’t spring for pest control, we can catch all the live bugs the little guy needs. I’m gonna call him Yalex!”

Zethrid knew as well as anyone that once a creature had a name it was no longer a pest, but a pet; and so it came to pass that she headed back out into the predawn to go pick up some stuff to make a crib for a hitchhiking spider.

“Make sure you get one with air holes,” Ezor said as she saw her to the door. “Get some soil, too. Not the type with fertilizer though. Get sterile if you can find it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Zethrid took out her keys and clicked the button to unlock the car, and much to her surprise the car’s engine roared to life and the headlights came on. She paused in the parking lot. Had Great Uncle Quark rigged this little three button remote to be able to start the engine too? But if he’d done that, why hadn’t it done that back at the creepy old house? Whatever, she had to get over it, her lady was waiting on a spiderarium. She hustled over to the running car, but then as she opened the door, the stereo suddenly came to life.

_♬ Life is so strange (destination unknown) when you don't know your destination ♬_

Zethrid sat down in the driver’s seat as the old New Wave song continued to pour out of the car’s aftermarket sound system. Somebody, possibly Great Uncle Quark (but probably not) had upgraded to a JVC receiver at some point in the car’s history. Maybe there was something misfiring in the car’s electrical system. Sometimes when people tried to switch out the in-dash radio without professional know-how they messed up the wiring. She’d tinker around with it on her next day off, but she had a feeling she wasn’t going to find anything wrong with it. As she backed out of her parking space, she decided that if she was going to have to share the car with a little ghostie, then so be it.

She had always loved fast women. Anyway, the ghostie couldn’t possibly be more annoying company than the spider.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Shiro began to wake slowly from a dream in which Lance was singing “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” while cooking french toast for a family of sharks, then he woke all at once when he realized there was an eldritch horror looming over him. He screamed. The eldritch horror screamed back, and then scolded him.

“Ani-san, you scared me!”

The eldritch horror was Kuro, and Lance really was singing along with a music player which sounded like it was coming from the kitchen. Shiro jack-knifed into a sitting position on the couch, which he currently had to himself. Early morning light streamed in through the living room windows. He looked behind him as Kuro harrumphed off in that direction and saw Hunk standing at the kitchen counter taking things out of a large to-go bag. Every few seconds Keith or Lance would dance back into view. Their energetic dancing brought them into frequent proximity to Hunk, whose hips they bumped with wild abandon; then they danced apart to make way for Kuro.

“Hey Kuro, you wanna go wash your face in the master bathroom?” Hunk looked up from food sorting and hip bopping to ask the question. “The kids’ll be awake soon and your makeup is pretty scary.”

“Okay,” Kuro said, and disappeared further into the house.

“Boo,” said a voice over Shiro’s opposite shoulder as a hand came down upon it, and he yelled again as he flipped around like a couch potato ninja to behold his sister-in-law laughing her ass off at her own cheap prank. “I should have been filming that,” she said when she caught her breath. Pidge was dressed like a punk rocker. She wiped a tear away from a heavily lined eye with a studded knuckle. She wasn’t wearing her glasses. “I guess I’ll just have to live with the blurry memories.”

Shiro rubbed the back of his neck, which was sore from having slept on it funny. “The tragedy of it all.”

“I’ll survive.” Pidge flopped down on the couch next to him. “We brought Jack In the Box. Got there just in time for Kuro to snag the last munchie meal, then we ordered a bunch of jumbo breakfast platters so you guys wouldn’t starve.”

“That was thoughtful of you,” Shiro admitted. “Isn’t this a bit out of your way?”

“Nah, we had to bring Lance and Keith back here, it’s fine. Anyway, it’s just our way of saying thanks for making this Halloween extra memorable.”

“Back?” Shiro’s hand paused in its neck rubbing as his alpha brain sprang to full alertness leaving the rest of his sleep-fogged brain still struggling to catch up. “Back from where?”

“From the house Lance inherited,” Pidge answered casually. “When you go out there later to talk to Mister Spurr, do you mind going inside and getting my glasses? They fell off somewhere near the second floor landing. Otherwise I’m gonna have to wear my backup glasses and there’s a reason those are my backup glasses.”

Before Shiro could demand that she explain everything she’d just said with annotated footnotes, the children stumbled into the living room, still dressed in their jammies, with Kosmo padding along behind them like a big furry nanny. Sunny rubbed his eyes sleepily and adorably as he continued on past them towards his father in the kitchen. Kosmo followed him in that direction. Caro looked more alert, her eyes promising lightning under the thundercloud of her bedhead hair.

“Tou-chan!” She broke off from the cute procession and made right for Shiro. “Don’t be scare!” She must have heard his wake up call. Probably he’d woken her and Sunny up in his alarm, and he was kind of sorry for that even though that was more of his little brother’s fault than his own.

Caro leaned on the couch and looked up at her father earnestly. “I make monster go ‘way for you.”

“You can?” Shiro lifted her up onto his lap. He could use a good morning snuggle before he had to go and confront her mother over whatever mischief he’d been up to last night.

“Yes,” Caro said, completely serious. “I say ‘Blam!” and dey go.”

“Thank you Lí-chan.” Shiro accepted the offer in the spirit in which it was intended, even as he realized that Caro had misunderstood that ‘blam’ was supposed to be a sound effect. Instead, she thought it was a magic word, which meant that he was going to be hearing ‘blam’ at top volume a lot more often in the near future. “I’ll call for you if the monsters ever come back.” Then he’d cover his ears.

“You be safed.” Caro patted his cheeks with her little hands before squirming to get down and toddling off toward the breakfast smells.

Hunk had redistributed the jumbo breakfast platters onto serving plates of eggs, bacon, sausage, mini pancakes, french toast sticks and hash browns so that everybody could get as much or as little as they wanted. Lance and Keith cut portions into bite-sized pieces for the children. There was a carton of orange juice for the kids and a fresh pot of coffee for the adults, although it seemed that four of them were already wired on iced coffees from the drive thru. Also, from some coffee that they’d drunk at the abode of one Mister Spurr, who owned the cemetery next door to the place where Lance had promised Shiro he would not try to go alone.

“I didn’t go alone,” Lance said, pointing with a french toast stick for emphasis. “I went with Keith, Pidge and Kuro.”

Kosmo grumbled.

“And Kosmo.” Lance offered the french toast stick to Kosmo, who took the culinary conciliatory gesture from his hand as delicately as Aurora accepting the hand of a suitor in the Rose Adagio from _Sleeping Beauty_. “Kosmo was a very good boy.”

“The best boy,” Keith cut in, and the others agreed, to much tail wagging and more treat gathering from Kosmo.

Shiro was not completely pacified by this answer. It was true that Lance had kept his promise, but it was also true that they’d both known what Shiro had really meant when he’d pressed him for one. Yes, the house was legally Willed to Lance, making him the party who should decide what happened to it and who got to enter (and, okay, when) and yes, he was sitting here eating breakfast appearing to be perfectly fine, if a bit jazzed on caffeine. The fact that Lance had not only elected to take someone with him but had in fact brought with him a whole team was the main reason Shiro wasn’t currently scenting him within an inch of his life. That could wait for later. The real issue was Shiro’s own uneasiness about the house, and his inner alpha’s inexplicable desire to personally shield his family from whatever could have caused that feeling.

He knew it wasn’t entirely rational. He’d grown used to the fact that many of his protective instincts toward his mate were simply not going to conform to reason, so he needed to moderate them instead. Lance had done thorough research with the materials provided by the lawyer (who had turned out to be shadier than suspected) but damn it, he also could have woken Shiro up before taking off on this adventure. He was sorely tempted to launch into a detailed argument explaining why Lance should let Shiro take point in future visits to the house, but there were children present and he didn’t want to scare them with those details. His cell phone rang; it was Darrell. Shiro excused himself from the table and took the call on the back porch.

_“Guess who’s not the executor of Elena O’Honan’s Will?”_

“Luciano Keezor, Esquire,” Shiro said.

_“Good guess,”_ Darrell replied. _“The real executor is a man named Memor Spurr, he owns the property next door.”_

“Yeah, Lance went out there and met him last night.” Shiro probably hadn’t kept the irritation out of his voice, but he trusted Darrell to know it wasn’t directed at him.

Darrell sighed. _“Lance tends to lose his objectivity wherever Chip is concerned.”_

“He does, doesn’t he?” It gave Shiro pause to realize that was true. There was abundant evidence supporting Darrell’s claim, and once acknowledged it wasn’t hard to understand why. Lance had grown up knowing Charles existed but not knowing who he was, only to find out who he was and then in very short order find out that he no longer existed. Shiro couldn’t honestly claim to be any more objective about his own father, though not for the same reasons. Perhaps those differing reasons explained why he hadn’t previously noticed that Lance had some trouble thinking clearly in that area.

_“I don’t know exactly how Keezor intercepted the Will yet, but I’ve a pretty good idea of when and where. It had to have happened after Spurr filed the Will with the county clerk’s office. Somehow Keezor managed to get himself appointed as a representative of the estate, which shouldn’t have happened since there is a named executor in the Will. I’ve notified a few people who can help put that problem to rest.”_ Darrell paused. _“Would you feel I was out of line if I initiated a conversation with Lance about all of this? I know Chip wouldn’t have wanted him to be putting himself at any kind of risk in his memory.”_

Shiro was touched at the offer. It was the sort of selfless intervention a father would make, a role left only partially filled in Lance’s life since his beloved maternal grandfather had died. Marco was too close in age to have ever been able to take on the role, and by the time Luis had been ready he’d just become a father himself. Vibiana had tried to be both mother and father in those later years, which was a hell of a lot to ask of anyone. It didn’t feel appropriate for Shiro to do it because he was Lance’s husband, and that relationship was complex enough as it was. Therefore he appreciated Darrell putting himself out there.

“I don’t think you would be out of line, and I would personally appreciate it, though of course I can’t speak for Lance with this one.”

_“That’s alright,”_ Darrell said dryly, _“I have complete faith that Lance will do plenty of speaking for himself.”_

Shiro laughed then, feeling marginally better, because Darrell was right. Lance might leap in without looking to a degree that would have turned Shiro’s hair white by now if it wasn’t already, but communication after the dust settled had never been one of their major issues. That said, he was still going to scent the hell out of Lance the very next time they were alone.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
When they spoke to the front desk about extending their reservations they discovered that the Penthouse Suite had been reserved for another party, so Rizavi sent several bellhops to help the Shiroganes move into the Wilshire Presidential Suite. They still had great views, a kitchen, an extra bedroom and an enormous master suite along with a ridiculous amount of living space, but this time they had those amenities on the eighth floor of the hotel’s original wing, with no wraparound terrace. Those great views were out of their new suite’s windows. As Lance enjoyed the reinvigorating power of the master bathroom’s steam shower, he felt sure that they’d just discovered their new favorite place to stay when visiting Los Angeles. He wrapped a bath sheet around himself as he stepped past the walk-through closet into the master bedroom where he was immediately grabbed up by Shiro in front of the canopy bed.

“Where’s Caro?” Lance asked as Shiro began scenting his clean, damp hair with rough strokes of his chin.

“Fell asleep watching _Blue’s Clues_ ,” Shiro replied. He pointed through the bedroom’s open door into the living room, where Lance could see the floofy top of his little girl’s head reclined on the sofa; and the fact that they could monitor their child so easily from the master bedroom was another perk this specialty suite had to recommend it.

“I just took a shower,” Lance said.

“Good,” Shiro said as he carried Lance down with him onto the bed and drew its curtain shut around them. “That gives me a nice clean canvas to work with.”

Lance struggled to keep his breathing even and his vocalizations under control as Shiro peeled him out of the bath sheet and proceeded to scent him thoroughly on every gland, from primary to tertiary and back again. In spite of the delicious distraction, both sets of parental ears were attuned to the living room. If Caro were to walk in on them it would hardly be their first near miss, but they’d successfully avoided being caught in flagrante delicto thus far by being vigilant. Lance wanted to ease Shiro out of his clothes and stroke him in return, but he resisted the urge. Caro could wake up at any moment and they didn’t have any babysitting backup on hand. When Shiro finally lifted his head, Lance did give into the impulse for a lingering kiss, pulling him close by the shoulders.

“I’m sorry.” He tugged on Shiro’s hips to encourage him to rest his weight over his prone body. “I didn’t mean to make you feel left out. I got so focused on getting my dad’s belongings out of there I forgot about everything else.”

Shiro’s muscular frame settled over him, warm and grounding. “Did you think I wouldn’t let you have those things?” His eyes were soft, but the set of his handsome features and a feel through the bond sense were graver.

“No, that’s not it.” Lance ran his hands through the fine hairs at Shiro’s nape, hoping to soothe. “I was afraid you’d want to do it for me. It felt like something I had to do myself.”

“You don’t have to...” To prove anything, was what he’d been about to say, they both felt it practically reverberating through the bond. The need to prove oneself was not easily put aside, as Shiro well knew. “Just don’t forget I’m there for you.”

“I won’t forget again,” Lance said. “Cross my heart.” La Cachita, help him to keep that promise.

Then they luxuriated in a quiet make out session, taking care not to teeter over into full blown lovemaking. Their restraint provided its own form of sweet satisfaction.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Sometime over the past twenty-four hours Shiro had gotten popcorn butter in his hair. He washed it out in the shower and then left his spouse and child drowsing in the hotel suite to go and meet with Memor Spurr. He found the man at his place of business, where he was already engaged in a discussion with a litigator from Los Angeles County Superior Court. A tall fellow in a camel suit accessorized with small square glasses and long greying hair, Spurr gave off more of an aging hippie vibe than that of an undertaker. The litigator, an alpha woman named Vira Singh, gave off an air of brisk competence.

“Keezor made it look like an honest mistake by way of a filing error, and he probably would have flown under the radar with it if your investigator’s efforts hadn’t unmasked his larcenous interest in the property. His legal secretary Nerok has a record for trafficking in passwords. His internet usage is supposed to be strictly monitored but we think he’s slipped his digital leash with his boss’s help. I won’t be surprised if we discover that Keezor and Nerok have pulled this trick before.”

Shiro left the meeting feeling satisfied that probate on the house would continue in an above board manner, and that the reprobate who had tried to cut himself a deal under false pretenses would eventually get what was coming to him. Spurr was prepared to purchase the property at fair market value, and with the beneficiary (Lance) being wholly in favor of this, it should now be a simple matter of going through the legal steps of an appraisal, an offer and a contract. Shiro had suggested utilizing the talents of his property manager Abi Han to expedite the process, and Spurr had raised no objections. As Spurr had no objections, neither did Singh. Both recommended to Shiro that he update the exterior locks on the house, as it was very likely that Keezor had made himself a skeleton key and might try to cut his losses with petty theft once he realized that his plan had hit a snag.

Shiro thought this was wise so he allowed Spurr to call on a locksmith he knew personally. They walked together through the memorial park to meet the locksmith at the house. The shaded park was far less eerie viewed from the vantage point of the foot path than it had been from the street. As they strolled, Shiro brought up a concern which he didn’t realize Lance had already raised earlier that morning.

“I understand why she’d want to make amends, but honestly Lance would have been happy just to have Charles’s belongings.”

“In order to properly atone, Elena began to feel that it would be necessary to sacrifice something of hers,” Spurr replied. “Spiritually speaking, a sacrifice is very personal. It’s not even so much about what the recipient values, but about what the giver values, and the energy transferred by the willing surrender of that valued thing to the recipient.”

“The house,” Shiro realized. Though he wasn’t sure he agreed with the conclusion, he could follow the thread of logic which had led to it.

“The house,” Spurr confirmed. “Elena was a difficult woman with a great deal of scorn for the laws of man, but she had a hearty respect for metaphysical laws, and she did love that house. It was not an easy thing for her to let go of, but she understood the selfless reward of a true sacrifice. Now, her mother,” and here Spurr paused and sighed, “her mother still has trouble with the concept, but don’t you worry, I will deal with that.”

He patted Shiro’s shoulder while Shiro stood there confused.

“I thought... surely her mother is dead?”

Shouting up ahead interrupted whatever might have been said next.

“Unhand me this instant!”

“I am making a citizen’s arrest!”

“You’re a case of arrested development!”

Shiro and Spurr hurried up the walk and through the back gate to find none other than Luciano Keezor, Esquire, being restrained on the back section of the wraparound porch by a potbellied man in blue coveralls.

“Mister Varkon?” Spurr dared to approach the chaotic little scene on the back steps. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“I was trying to exercise my rights as a private individual when this man accosted me!” Keezor shouted.

“He was trying to break in!” Varkon countered. “I found the rim lock in pieces on the kitchen floor!”

“Why would I need to break the lock when I have my own key?” Then Keezor realized that he was addressing the real executor of the estate along with one of the men he’d tried to bamboozle, and said, “oh.”

“I believe what you meant to say was ‘oh shit’,” said Shiro.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
“Thanks for this,” Keith said.

“It’s no trouble at all,” Lance reassured him. “I’m happy to do it.”

Since the Shiroganes were staying in town a little longer, Lance offered to babysit Sunny so that Keith and Hunk could stay out late for their anniversary if they wanted. They’d accepted enthusiastically, but what they’d decided that they wanted to do instead was to have a romantic night in. Hunk was back at home setting it all up as they spoke. Keith had packed a bag for Sunny and picked him up from preschool to bring him over to the hotel, where he’d been warmly greeted by former coworkers all the way up to the Wilshire Presidential Suite.

Lance had been playing Just Dance in Kids Mode with Caro when they came in. Now Caro was playing with Sunny and they’d found the old _Ghostbusters_ theme song. Keith’s conversation with Lance had been peppered with occasional shouts of the song’s refrain in tiny little voices coming from the suite’s living room. In toddlerese, it kind of sounded like they weren’t afraid of no goats. There was a slight chance that’s what they’d actually intended to say.

“You sure?” Keith asked. “They’re gonna be a lot without Kosmo around to help wear them out.” If Caro had even half as much energy as Banon then Keith knew this to be true. From what he’d seen so far, she had more than half at least, and Lance was talking about watching them for the rest of the day all the way through to the following morning.

“Course I’m sure,” Lance replied. “I’m also a lot, remember? Besides, Shiro will be back to help out in just a couple of hours. Go have fun, it’s your anniversary!”

Keith felt a big grin blooming on his face as he hugged Lance at the door, from a warmth that quickly overcame the brief nose wrinkle caused by the fact that his friend smelled loudly of alpha pheromones, and a little bit like buttered popcorn. He was planning on having a lot of fun.

_♬ Who you gonna call? ♬_

**♪ “Goat bussers!” ♪**

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Shiro had the great pleasure of watching Keezor escorted off the property in a police cruiser. As he was stuffed into the backseat, Keezor lost his composure and shouted, “We could have made a fortune if it wasn’t for your meddling omega! All he had to do was sign some papers and mind his own business!” Like a typical thief, Keezor had already begun thinking of the Spurr and O’Honan properties as his even though he was not the rightful owner of either of them. Shiro figured it wouldn’t hurt to keep a closer eye on Lance until they were safely back in New York. But first he had to collect Pidge’s missing eyeglasses.

He nodded at Varkon the locksmith as he passed him working on the front door locks and crossed the foyer towards the staircase. The front rooms were a touch less intimidating in daylight with the drapes open and Varkon’s work lights chasing the shadows out of the corners. The situation became gloomier on the stairs. Varkon wasn’t working on the second floor, so he hadn’t set any lights up there, and sunlight from the windows didn’t reach into the deepest parts of the stairwell. Even the sounds of Varkon using power tools in the front entryway became muffled once Shiro turned at the bend in the stair. He clicked on the yellow flashlight Varkon had lent him for this task and intrepidly ventured up.

Pidge had said she was sure she’d lost her glasses on the second floor close to the stairs. Shiro scanned every dusty step just in case they’d bounced downstairs. He caught the lingering scents of Lance, Keith, Kuro and Pidge along with a whiff of canine and the cloying smell of a blocker. Shiro was starting to wonder if maybe there had been a living danger in the house with them and not a ghost as Kuro still insisted on calling the shape he’d seen in a second floor room. It made his inner alpha itch for a fight as he cleared the top step and entered the second floor stair hall with still no sign of any glasses, though the flashlight did catch the glint of a glass witch ball dangling over the landing. He scanned the floor and then the closed doors to the rooms and saw nothing else unusual (for this place anyway).

Pidge had told him that she’d just rushed out of the floor’s larger bathroom when her glasses fell off. Kuro said he’d just run from unit 2F when he’d lifted her up over his shoulder. Those rooms were right next door to one another. Shiro tested the door to 2F and found it locked. Kuro surely hadn’t the presence of mind to lock it behind him when he’d fled from there. Someone else must have done it.

Shiro tested keys until he found the one that unlocked unit 2F. It opened into an alcove with a huge wall mirror which reflected his flashlight back at him. Spots danced before Shiro’s eyes as he stepped through the alcove into the bedroom. He smelled Kuro, whose fright had permeated the room with a scent like sweet incense. Overlaying that he smelled the blocker, strong enough in here that it was more obvious to Shiro that it was supposed to smell like some sort of berry. Under all of that he caught a strain of something earthier.

“Alpha,” he muttered.

He was sure of it, and that whoever had left this scent had not been Pidge, and it made him very angry. Some strange alpha had been in here with his family and they’d had no idea of the potential danger. If that alpha turned out to be Keezor, Shiro would come for him using every legal avenue he could think of. He willed his temper under control as called the number on the card the police officer had left with him. He reported his find as he continued looking around the room, which had clearly been cased by someone. Drawers were left partially open and the bed looked like it had been moved away from the wall.

There was still no sign of Pidge’s glasses. It was possible that the mystery alpha had made off with them, but Shiro still hadn’t checked the bathroom yet. He closed out his call with the officer, who promised to send someone out to follow up. Then he left 2F, locking up behind him. He was planning on leaving the keys with Spurr, which was what should have happened to begin with, and what would have happened if Keezor hadn’t intercepted the Will. Shiro wondered if Keezor had stolen anything out of the house while he’d been its illegal custodian.

The bathroom was very old-fashioned, sort of like the one attached to the nursery at home, except this one had fustier decorating choices. The sink had a skirt with a kitschy floral print, and the wrap-around curtain on the oval ring over the clawfoot tub matched. The others had been in here, Shiro could smell them. Pidge came through especially strongly, probably because this was where she’d been standing when Kuro had sounded the alarm. Her glasses were not in here, though. Shiro cast the flashlight around until it landed on the built-in linen closet.

If the closet had been open when Pidge had run, then maybe the glasses had fallen off and gotten kicked in there before it was closed up again. It was a long shot but it was worth a look. Shiro opened the double doors and saw tightly packed shelves of dusty towels, stacked sideways to disguise how shallow the shelves actually were. No sign of a pair of eyeglasses. He picked up towels to look underneath of them, but still nothing. Then he found the loose shelf.

Lance had mentioned this when telling the story at breakfast. Was it possible that Pidge’s glasses had somehow gotten kicked all the way into the secret room? Only remotely. Was it possible that Keezor had discovered the existence of the secret room and gone in there at some point to steal someone else’s mementos? That seemed a lot more likely, and it was that possibility which convinced Shiro to take out the loose shelf and fish out the key to open the secret room. If Keezor had taken anything, it might have left a telltale spot with less dust accumulation.

Shiro opened the inner door. His flashlight’s beam found lots of intriguing items on display, but no evidence of anything recently taken. At least, not until he got to the placard with Lance’s father’s initials on it, but he’d expected to find something missing there. He had certainly not expected to find Pidge’s glasses folded neatly in the spot which had recently held a ring. He stood staring for a long moment trying to compute the fact of those spectacles just sitting there, as if someone had placed them there on purpose. He finally found the presence of mind to snap a few pictures with his phone and forward them to the police officer.

The alpha who had cased 2F, whether or not that was Keezor, must have left the glasses here. It was the only scenario that checked out. Even though Lance would have locked the secret room up behind him and nobody else should have known about it, as that was the whole point of having a secret room. It certainly lent credence to the theory that the mystery alpha had been Keezor. Shiro pocketed the glasses and locked up the secret room again before putting the linen closet back to its original state of orderly decay. Then he stepped out into the hall and saw a door open that had been closed when he’d walked into the bathroom.

It was the door to the servant’s staircase. Winder stairs led up into darkness. “Hello?” Shiro cautiously approached the open door, shining his light through the frame. “Varkon? Mister Spurr?”

Nobody answered. Shiro cast the flashlight’s beam up the stairs. He couldn’t see around the bend all the way to the top. Slowly, he climbed. “Is anyone up there?”

He turned a corner and stopped as his flashlight illuminated a dark shape at the top of the stairs, backlit by dim natural light. For one frozen moment he thought he was looking at the headless body of a woman. Then his eyes caught the details he’d missed on first glance and he realized that it was a dress form mannequin. He almost laughed at himself, until he remembered from Lance’s story that the mannequin he was looking at should have been in the turret room. “I know someone is up there. You might as well come out now.”

The mannequin began to teeter in place, like someone was prodding it. Except if someone was up there behind it, the vantage point must be too steep for Shiro to be able to spot them. Then the mannequin toppled forward, falling right toward him. With a shout, Shiro leaped down the stairs like Wilt Chamberlain, bouncing off the walls as he stumbled backwards out of the second floor doorway and fell hard on his ass. The mannequin landed sideways on the stairs at the bend where he could see part of the upper body. Then it bumped down a few more stairs, seemingly by itself.

Shiro was on his feet and down the main staircase at the speed of light. Varkon arrived at the bottom of the stairs as he lit on the first floor landing.

“You alright, man?” Varkon asked. “I heard you holler.”

“Someone’s up there,” Shiro said. They must have come down behind the mannequin and pushed it, no other explanation was even slightly reasonable. “We should wait outside for the police to come back.”

“I’ll wait with you,” Varkon said, “but I think we probably better get Memor over here. I don’t think the cops can handle what’s probably hanging around up there, but he for sure can.”

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
Keith let himself into the foyer expecting to find a dog waiting patiently for a walk. Kosmo had mostly outgrown his jumping habit. Instead, Keith found a trail of orange petals littering the hardwood floor. Smiling, he followed the trail through the house all the way to the back door. He looked through the patio door window and gasped at what he saw before opening the door and going out there. Kosmo abandoned his investigation of the new thing on the patio to get pats and ear skritches from Keith.

“You put it together in just one day?”

Hunk laughed at Keith’s amazement. “I had a lot of help. Dad and Uncle Jiro came over. They only left a couple of minutes before you got home.” He looked down at the hot tub, which he was still filling with water. “This is gonna take a couple more hours to heat up once it’s full. The moms brought us dinner so we wouldn’t have to cook.”

So that’s what was in the hot bag on the patio table. Whatever they’d made it was bound to be delicious. Hunk had brought out some plates and silverware, as well as the galvanized tub with a selection of bottled beverages on ice. A bouquet of orange Gerbera daisies burst cheerfully out of a vase, and was most likely the source of the orange petals that someone had sprinkled through the house. It had probably been Hunk, that kind of romantic gesture had him written all over it.

“I already took Kosmo out for his constitutional. What do you say we have some dinner and then test this thing out?”

“I’m for that,” Keith said, walking into Hunk’s warm arms for a smooch.

They’d decided on the wood-fired cedar hot tub as their fifth year anniversary present for each other several months before, and the one they’d finally chosen was sent as a kit. They needed to take into account the limited available space on their already crowded back patio, as well as the necessity of picking a model that wasn’t too deep for Sunny to stand up in, so they’d picked a relatively shallow two-person design with a bench and a heat source barrier. Sunny was still going to get a crash course on hot tub safety when he came home. He’d figured out how to follow Kosmo out of the doggie door not long after learning to walk, so safety lessons and backyard security cams had become a normal part of family life.

But tonight? Keith grinned as he indulged himself in another embrace, rising up on his toes to scent Hunk’s jaw. Tonight he was very glad that they’d already upgraded their privacy fence.

  
*~*~*~*~*

  
“I told you so, Ani-san.”

“It was not a ghost,” Shiro insisted to his little brother. Kuro and Pidge had come over to collect Pidge’s glasses and had stayed for a room service dinner. Then Lance had tucked the kids into bed and read them a bedtime story with sound effects courtesy of Pidge and theatrical flourishes performed by Kuro. After that, the adults had repaired to the library for a nightcap and that’s when the scarier parts of Shiro’s day had come out. “It had to have been Nerok.”

“Did they catch him?” Pidge asked.

“He had an alibi,” Shiro admitted. “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t him.” Nothing else made sense.

Pidge and Kuro traded a married look at that, but neither commented on whatever it was they were thinking. The conversation then moved onto less spooky subjects, such as Pidge’s hopes for attending grad school in Japan.

“If she gets into Todai or Sophia then we could live in Chichi’s apartment,” Kuro said.

“It’s your apartment now,” Shiro reminded him, and Kuro shrugged languidly.

Shiro and his family had overnighted there a couple of times when they’d attended Kuro’s second wedding, and Shiro recalled that the place looked almost exactly the same as when their father had used it for business travel. Only Kuro’s bedroom had truly reflected his own personality. Perhaps living there again as a married man would encourage Kuro to put his stamp on the place. But as the Shirogane-Holts had refrained from voicing their opinions on whatever Shiro had seen in the old house earlier that day, so too did Shiro refrain from pushing his views on Kuro that he should make that apartment more fully his own. After they moved in it would probably happen naturally, perhaps even sneakily, as so many progressions in life seemed to happen. The two couples continued to chat amiably while adjusting their volume to be mindful of the sleeping children just down the hall, until the hour grew late and Pidge declared that she was about to turn into a pumpkin.

Hugs were given all around, and then Shiro saw Pidge and Kuro to the door with a promise to meet up again before they concluded their business and went home. When Shiro turned back around, Lance was waiting in the doorway to the master bedroom holding the remains of the bottle of port they’d been drinking. Shiro strode up to him and took him in his arms, kissing him deeply. Lance still smelled like him, which was intensely gratifying. After the day he'd had, Shiro no longer felt even a little bit ridiculous about giving in to the urge to do it.

“Come to bed, querido” Lance whispered as they broke for air. “We’ll finish this wine and get loose.”

Shiro grinned into another kiss. Lance had picked up on his unsettled mood and wanted to distract him. He was so grateful for him. “Think you can be quiet?”

Lance leaned back in his arms to shoot him a mock glare. “I can’t believe you just asked me that. Guess I’m gonna have to prove it to you, then.”

Then he did, all night long, as the children slept peacefully through to the morning. If anything else out there rested less easily, it couldn’t touch the couple making love in the canopy bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks go out to everybody who reads this. :) You are all appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally intended this to be a one shot, but it got long so I divided it into two chapters for digestibility.


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